Golden Compass
by Haven126
Summary: When the unthinkable happens in downtown LA, Jack Dalton is left devastated. Without his moral compass, Jack slips further and further into a web of predators and shadow organizations. Yet even those eager to take advantage of his skills have overlooked one important fact - and underestimating him is never a wise move.
1. Chapter 1

Standard disclaimers apply. I don't own any of these characters, please don't sue. Also, I'm not really here, and you can't see me. This is not the lurker you're looking for.

 **Content Warning** : Uh . . . all of them? Super mild tearjerk warning. Medium violence, language, and non-explicit sexual situations warning. Seriously angry Jack Dalton warning. These content warnings apply to all chapters.

For those of you who read the first two sections and want to toss the rest out, the first section of the last chapter summarizes the entire series of events.

-M-

Bozer wadded up his napkin and tossed it gently at his bread plate. "Uncle."

The man sitting across from him snorted; he'd thrown in the towel a few minutes prior. "Well, man, you fought the good fight."

He had to agree. Six tapas, plus a bite or two from Mac's five, was way more than a meal.

"But we had to try them all."

"We did," his roomie agreed. "Honestly, I can't remember the last time Ricarnello's changed up the menu."

Their waiter, a dark-complected kid Bozer couldn't remember seeing before, had been hovering with clamshells waiting for their inevitable defeat, and appeared at his shoulder with five plastic containers. "How was everything?"

Bozer didn't reply. He just patted his stomach.

The kid didn't seem surprised, and Mac roused himself and started to help Boze pack up the food. "So, get inspired?"

Inspired was relative. "The butternut squash pork was as expected, a little sweeter than I might have gone. That was-" He pointed at the brown paste Mac was scooping. MacGyver glanced at it a second, then at another plate that had similarly colored brown paste stains, but had been nearly scraped clean.

". . . this was the doro-wot fusion, and that was the caramelized onions and beef short rib." It was empirically clear which Mac had preferred.

Bozer just shook his head. "Sometimes I forget you are such a meat and potatoes guy."

MacGyver shrugged, helping Bozer pack up the spinach and swordfish tamales. "What can I say, Boze. I'm a simple man."

His roommate snorted – loudly. "Simple man, no. Simple needs . . . maybe."

The waiter reappeared with two take-away bags – paper, and 100% recyclable, just like the rigid plastic clamshells – and it took Boze a second to realize he'd also dropped off the check. Because the black leather billfold was in his roomie's hands.

Bozer gave his roommate a look. "Dude, come on-"

"Hey, it's my treat. I'm the one who dragged us out here-"

"Oh yeah." Boze let his right arm flop limp across the table. "You really twisted it bad."

Mac continued as if Bozer hadn't spoken. "-and we hadn't really been out, just us, since-"

"Since Sparky outed that you were on a crusade to make me feel better about –" He dropped his voice. "Leanna?"

Mac managed to look not even remotely guilty. "All I'm saying is we've been a little busy since then. It's nice to just get out with your best friend and try a new place."

"Or an old one." It wasn't like Ricarnello's wasn't one of their favorite haunts. But it had been at least two years since the fusion joint had really changed up the menu, and he had to admit, some of those tapas were pretty good. They almost made the place date-worthy.

"Yeah, well, you didn't have to, but thanks." Bozer grabbed the bags with their leftovers, and Mac laid the leather wallet on the table, with a few bills sticking out the top. It was about seven pm, just inching towards the dinner rush, and the waiter gave them a nod of thanks as they weaved through the tables towards the front of the restaurant.

It took Boze a second to pick Mac's voice out over the hum of the other diners. "I know, that raise from your promotion is probably burning a hole in your pocket-"

"I'm thinkin' I should ask Riley to look up everyone's salary." Bozer glanced back at Mac, who was trailing behind him. "Something tells me there's a pretty wide range – and I'm at the bottom of it."

His roommate refused to be baited. "Hey, get a few years' experience, maybe pull off a miracle or two, you'll get there."

Bozer shook his head, ready to protest that he in fact _had_ already pulled off miracles, and caught sight of the mint bowl. "And speaking of Riley-"

He turned and pushed the leftover bags on Mac, who accepted them good-naturedly, and he scooped up a few little cellophane bags of the pastel-colored mints. "Butter mints. She loves these."

Mac shook his head with a grin, backing into the door, and he held it open as Bozer passed, stuffing the mints into his jacket pockets. "Remind me I have these when we get home, I'll move 'em into my bag."

Mac caught up to him in three long strides, walking beside him and fishing in his pocket for his keys. "It's supposed to be chillier tomorrow, actually. I was thinking we could –"

The rest of whatever Mac was saying was drowned out by the powerful rev of a street bike, parked in the space just in front of Mac's jeep. The leather-clad driver rolled the bike backwards, striking the bumper of the jeep with his rear tire, and Bozer opened his mouth to say something when the passenger on the back of the bike, similarly covered head to toe in black, turned towards them.

Mac's arm – and the bags of leftovers – smacked into his chest, shoving him sideways, and it was only after MacGyver had already reacted that Bozer made out the gun.

The gunshots weren't isolated and distinct; they mingled into the rest of the noise, the bike screaming and peeling away, glass shattering, the leftovers rattling out of the forgotten paper bags. By then Mac was already in front of him, shouldering him towards Ricarnello's, and Bozer tripped over his roommate's legs, both of them landing in a heap on the concrete.

Bozer had time to see the bike had no plates before it had zipped past the parked cars and out of line of sight.

Mac was half lying across his legs, his right arm still outstretched, and Bozer hastily untangled himself from his roommate.

"Mac! Mac, you okay-"

Without the support of Bozer's legs behind him, he slipped onto his back. There were two holes in the front of his off-white shirt, very small. The blood didn't start to show for several seconds.

Two hits, center mass. Spy school had taught him what movies had not. In movies, they called it a 'double tap.' In reality, it was a 'controlled pair.' A double tap would mean the second shot had not been aimed, so it would typically be higher or lower than the first. In this case, they were nearly level, and his textbook had been very explicit about why the controlled pair technique was preferred.

Bozer knew he was talking, he could feel his own mouth moving but he couldn't hear what he was saying. His hands were moving, too, he watched them cover up those tiny little holes, but nothing was welling up beneath his palms. He could actually feel when it soaked into his knees, instead, warmer than he'd thought it would be. Warmer than the concrete.

Mac was trying to tell him something. His movements were uncoordinated, and his eyes wide and shocked. Like if he kept them open, kept being able to see, then he'd be okay. There was no gasping, no coughing. Those two holes guaranteed both his lungs had been hit, and were in the process of collapsing if they hadn't already. It didn't stop Mac from trying to talk.

He managed a tiny choke; it stained his teeth red. He never stopped trying to speak.

People had gathered around them, some with their phones in their hand. Bozer was sure someone had called 911. It was weird, but he couldn't really hear them. Under his hands, Mac shuddered, lips still moving. His adam's apple bobbed. Some of the shock left his eyes, replaced by a single, intense focus.

And for the life of him, Bozer couldn't make out what Mac was trying to say.

He didn't realize he was crying until he couldn't see. He brought up a hand, dashing it against his eyes angrily, and in that one second, just in the one second he'd taken one of his hands off his roommate, his best friend –

Mac's lips stopped moving.

His eyes were still open, but they were soft and unfocused. Bozer replaced his hand instantly, apologizing, pressing down harder, but nothing made a difference. It felt like he was just squeezing the blood out faster. He only saw the lights because of the reflection in Mac's eyes, the red trying to blot out the blue, and then someone grabbed his shoulder, pulling him away, and Bozer tried to explain to them that he couldn't move his hands, because if he did -

But he already had, and Mac was gone.

-M-

Matilda Webber covered the ground in rapid strides, moving far too quickly for someone with such short legs, and Riley had to work to keep up.

They passed the ambulance bays, walking right into the main ED doors, and Riley hesitated as she took in the crowds, and the lines in front of the six receptionists. She expected Matty to plow her way straight to the front of one of them, but her boss never hesitated. She simply turned left and tailgated an oblivious nurse through the secured doors into the main Emergency Department.

Riley had to almost run to catch up, yanking her bag in front of her so it didn't hit the edge of the door, and then they were in the wide, beige tiled hallway that she wished wasn't so familiar.

He'd joked, the last couple times he'd been here, that he ought to get a loyalty card -

None of the staff challenged them. Matty marched on with purpose, her destination clearly in mind, but as far as Riley's phone said, they hadn't issued Mac a bay or a room -

 _Safety protocols_ , she reminded herself. If it was that serious, Matty would be hiding his location until they could secure it.

They passed all the bays, with light blue curtains hanging in the doorways to give the patients a semblance of privacy, and came to a set of double doors that presumably led to the ORs. This was also a badged door, and Matty finally stopped the metronomic tap-tap of her heels and pivoted on them, casting a glare back at the nearest nurse's station.

The nurse there took the pair of them in, her expression sympathetic, and she buzzed the door open.

Matty waited impatiently for the mechanized door to open, and continued into another wide hallway, this one not as brightly lit.

Riley followed her, noting that two of the operating rooms were indeed in use, and through the observation windows she could see blue-scrubbed men and women gathered around prone bodies draped in surgical towels. But Matty led her past both of these, to a room at the end of the hallway that was also lit, though not as brightly as the theaters.

Was he already in recovery . . . ?

Riley watched her boss practically wrench the door open, revealing a small waiting room, lined with seats. In one of them, with his back to the observation window, was a Bozer-shaped huddle under a white hospital blanket.

The rhythmic staccato of Matty's heels finally gave way to something a little softer, a little slower, and she approached Bozer almost deferentially. He was hunched over, holding his stomach, and he didn't even look up. Riley glanced between them a moment, but neither of them said anything, and she didn't understand the silence.

"Boze . . . are you okay?"

Surely if he was injured, if he'd been shot too, the hospital would have treated him –

Bozer shook his head, vehemently, and then Matty walked deliberately right in front of him. The way he was curled over himself, their faces were almost even, and she reached up and cupped his jaw in her hands.

He swallowed hard, refusing to look at her, and Matty said something to him, too softly for Riley to hear. She felt like a voyeur, intruding on an intimate moment that wasn't meant for anyone to see, and Riley continued past them, to the observation window.

This couldn't be what it looked like. Matty would have told her.

There were two nurses, tending a person on a gurney. The room wasn't the usual recovery space, and there was no equipment around the bed. No heart monitor. No IV stand. The nurses were gathered near the patient's head, so she couldn't see his face, but –

Riley stared at the scene a moment. The large double sink in the room. The kidney-shaped effluence pan the nurse kept dipping a bloody washcloth into.

All Matty had told her was that Mac had been shot. Matty had driven; the entire car ride had been nothing but one bluetoothed phone call after another, getting surveillance information, tracking the shooters, figuring out where Mac and Bozer had ended up. She'd never gotten a word in edgewise, it hadn't occurred to her to even ask, because –

Because he couldn't be –

The nurse closest to them finally shifted, and she caught a glimpse of blond hair.

They weren't cleaning him for surgery.

The nurse gathered up his washcloths and pan, and then stepped completely away, heading back to the sinks, and Riley saw enough. She turned her back as well, closing her eyes, but the damage was done. She could see him just as clearly on the back of her eyelids.

The heels started up again, tapping past her, and she felt a hand on her forearm. It was meant to be comforting, but Matty's fingers might as well have been made of iron. Riley's eyes opened of their own accord when the door beside her was pushed open, and she heard one of the nurses speak before it swept shut again with a cool puff.

Riley held her breath until she was sure the air – and any scents carried on it – had swept past. It was a long time before she had the courage to turn around and look.

Matty was standing by the body – and it _was_ a body, it wasn't Mac anymore – and talking to one of the nurses. He nodded at a question she asked, and then she reached up and took one of Mac's hands, and Riley turned away again, and sank into the nearest seat.

And Bozer had been right there. It happened right in front of him.

She scooted one seat over, so that she was sitting next to Wilt, and she reached out into the hospital blanket, searching for his hand. She found cool fingers and latched on to them, and after a long moment, he responded, and squeezed them back. He was shaking.

Riley couldn't think of anything to say. She picked up his hand and pulled it towards her, so she could hold it between both of hers and try to warm him up, and he leaned into her with a soft, keening little wail. She tugged him close. He was all wrapped up in the blanket, like a little kid, and Riley tucked him tightly against her, leaning her cheek against his short-cropped hair.

It meant she was facing back towards the observation window, and Riley studied the fuzz on the blanket instead, focusing on each individual filament instead of the nurses, or Matty, or the reason Bozer was all but sobbing in her arms.

It might have been a minute or an hour before the door to the hallway was once more wrenched open, and she and Bozer both flinched at the suddenness of it. Riley didn't turn, or let go of Wilt, and whoever came in was perfectly silent. She heard the door swing itself shut, but no footsteps.

Just when she had convinced herself that whoever it was had realized their mistake, and stayed out in the hallway, the handle on the other door clicked. She heard the scuff of a boot, now, and fabric, and a black shadow crossed into her peripheral vision, gliding towards Matty and the gurney.

Jack had been wearing a black Metallica t-shirt earlier that afternoon.

Riley hugged Bozer a little more tightly, and closed her eyes.

The unnatural silence stretched taut. She didn't hear anything. No shouting. No screaming. Both would have been better than the cold, terrible quiet, broken only by Wilt trying so hard to get ahold of himself. Every once in a while he made to pull away, and she just held him tighter, because there was no way he could do that, and she needed someone to hold onto.

A steel pan crashed into the wall and clattered to the floor, rattling as it eventually came to a stop. The door to the waiting room opened again. Loose fabric and breathing and the squeak of slightly damp sneakers on the tile. The two nurses didn't say anything, they just passed through into the hallway, and then the hallway door swung shut again, and Riley was left alone with Bozer and that awful silence.

Eventually Matty returned. Riley heard her heels, still authoritative, heard the familiar vibration of a smartphone being manipulated. There were still phone calls to be made, texts to be sent. Matty's voice was just as calm and steady as it had been in the car.

"Did you find a match?" There was a brief, tense pause. "That'll do. Transfer him here and let me know as soon as he's on site. I want two agents posted at all times."

There was a muffled affirmative, and the sound of the call being disconnected. More faint vibrations, as the phone provided haptic feedback to her short little fingers.

The words slowly trickled into Riley's brain. Without letting go of Bozer, who had stopped sobbing but showed no further inclination to try to escape, Riley spoke. Her voice was thick.

"Did someone else get hurt?" There were no guards here, so clearly she wasn't posting agents on a corpse.

". . . no." Matty's voice was distracted. "We found a patient who can pass as a body double, being treated for an OD at General. He's a close enough match in height and weight and there's no family to complicate things."

Riley thought about that for a minute. Her stomach cramped.

A body double.

For Mac.

Riley picked up her head a little, so she wasn't speaking right into Bozer's ear. ". . . you're setting a trap."

"You're damn right I'm setting a trap," Matty almost snarled. "Wilt, until we know what's going on, you're staying in a safehouse."

He didn't respond one way or the other, and despite herself, Riley glanced back through the observation window. Jack had his back to them. His head was bowed, and his right hand was splayed across Mac's bare chest. His other was gripping the gurney hard enough to bend the metal rail.

Bozer didn't move, but his voice floated up, muffled by the blanket and her shoulder. " . . . I didn't see anything. No plate. Couldn't t-tell you gender, even."

Riley gave him a little squeeze, but he pulled back, and when she finally let him go and he leaned away, his face was wet and miserable.

He didn't look at either one of them. "I didn't even see the gun, not til . . . not til Mac'd already –"

"It's okay, Bozer." Matty's voice was gentle, in stark contrast to only a few seconds ago. "We have footage on traffic cams-"

"IT'S NOT OKAY!" he exploded. "I was there, I was _right there_!" Bozer cut himself off, then yanked the blanket from his shoulders. "I was right there," he repeated, almost to himself. "What was the point of all that training, if I couldn't – I didn't –"

"Bozer." There was steel under the velour. "Even seasoned agents can be taken by surprise. No one saw this coming. There was no chatter, and you had no warning." Matty's phone vibrated, but she ignored it, focusing all her attention on Bozer. "This wasn't your fault. Honestly, you're lucky to be alive."

Bozer shook his head. "It wasn't luck," was all he said.

Riley reached out to touch his arm, but he once again drew away, pushing himself to his feet and pacing restlessly to the other side of the room. Riley glanced at Matty, but her boss pressed her lips together and shook her head.

 _Let him be._

And Riley suddenly found herself without a task. Her phone wasn't chirping. Bozer was staring sightlessly out into the hallway, still hugging himself, and she knew there was nothing she could do for Jack.

"So . . . what now?" she finally asked, in a small voice.

Matty glanced at her phone, but her expression didn't give much away. "Now we do what we always do when we have an injured agent."

Riley just nodded, and then shook herself and grabbed her bag, which had slipped forgotten to the floor. She set up her rig on autopilot, accessing the hospital wifi. The cameras still had the default manufacturer passwords, just like the last time she'd been here, sitting with -

With Mac. After the dummy exposed himself to nerve gas.

Riley bit her lip, cocking an ear back towards the room behind her, but there was still no sound. And she didn't want to ask with Bozer there, but he showed no signs of being aware they existed. "And . . . what about . . ."

What about Mac.

Matty took a deep, slow breath through her nose. "It's already been arranged. We're bringing him home. He'll have to stay on ice until we get this sorted out."

For some reason, that took her by surprise, and she glanced up at Matty, uncertainly. Her boss's eyes were dark, and full of anger -

No, not anger.

Fury.

"No one outside of this room can know that he didn't make it." Her voice was hard and flat. "Until I know exactly how the hell they found MacGyver and Bozer, we need to assume the worst."

Riley couldn't stop herself. "You think -"

"I don't know what to think," Matty cut her off. "We all need to act exactly like we would if he was in the ICU." She glanced at Bozer, but he didn't react. "The agents on protection detail will have to be read in, and they'll handle surveillance here. Riley, I need you to do a full sweep of our network and employees. Every email, call, and text. Financials. Social media. Private life. I want to know if one of our people is compromised."

Riley just nodded. She'd run a similar search last year, and it didn't take her long to schedule the jobs.

". . . it was spur of the moment," Bozer said suddenly. His voice was quiet, but a little less broken. "We picked the place when we were walkin' out."

Riley nodded, and brought up camera footage in the Phoenix, scrolling back to earlier in the day. They'd all been downstairs in the lab, working on a think tank project for once, an ecologically friendly glue that could attract and capture all the tiny pieces of plastic floating around in the world's oceans. They'd called it around 4:30, that was when Mac had set the last variant of the solution to chill, and the footage got a little blurrier as Bozer grabbed Mac's leather jacket off the back of a lab stool and tossed it to him.

His effects. They were going to have to take those too. And then delete the hospital records, destroy the label sticker sheet, the death certificate –

Riley ran a finger under her eyes quickly, making sure she didn't smear her liner. She wouldn't be crying if he'd just been in the ICU.

In fact, she'd probably actually spend some time at the hospital. They always visited their teammates when they were laid up. And someone had to feed Jack when he was –

Riley paused the footage after she realized she'd missed the last twenty seconds of it. Jack. Jack wouldn't leave Mac's side if someone had put him in the ICU. They'd need a very compelling reason to keep Jack out of the hospital, something plausible.

Court appearance, maybe? Matty would insist that he kept that if one of the people Phoenix had helped put away was on trial, and one of Jack's covers had participated. She opened another window, scrolling through the records.

"Uh, I can bump up Clem Johnson's parole hearing to tomorrow afternoon," she offered, after a second. "We could ask the DA to call Jack up first." That hearing was likely to take at least the day, since Clem's defense attorney had been doggedly pursuing a mental and physical health 'mercy' waiver –

"No." It was clipped. "He needs to be here. Having him pulled off would be too obvious."

Riley stared at her. "You can't be serious-"

Her boss's face was stone. "Try me. Besides, I couldn't pry him off this op even if I wanted to." Her eyes went over Riley's head, to the observation window. "I want him where I can see him."

Riley found herself standing, with no memory of how she got there. "Matty, he can't – you can't expect him to-"

To sit beside someone they'd done up to look like Mac. Talk to him like he was Mac. Hassle the doctors and nurses for information.

Pretend he was still alive.

Matty pulled herself up to her full height. "Riley, our best shot at getting these guys is bringing them to us. You really think Jack _wants_ to be anywhere else? There's nothing –" She stopped herself, glancing away for a long moment, and Riley saw her carefully school her features.

When her boss finally spoke again, her voice was perfectly steady. "Right now he needs to work."

Riley wanted to protest. To say that that was insane, it was only going to make things worse, draw the hurt out longer. But she didn't. And she didn't turn around and look at him again.

Because in truth, there was probably nothing that could make this worse. Not for Jack.

It must have shown, the realization, because the lines around Matty's mouth softened, just a little. "Be patient with him," was all she said.

-M-

An alert popped up, near the clock on the system tray, in lime green, and Riley tabbed over to it immediately.

 _Access: [2122] B5LAB02 – 084269; Dalton Jack Wyatt_

Across the table from her, Jill glanced up. "Find something?"

Riley closed the alert, tabbing back to the analysis spreadsheet they were both poring over. "Nah. False alarm."

The other analyst nodded, dropping another couple hundred rows into the spreadsheet, and Riley made a face. Just a glance told her there weren't enough repeat transactions – or enough cash – to flag.

This wasn't getting them anywhere.

Jill's body language agreed with her unspoken thought; the other woman dropped her head straight back, then rolled it to her right and left shoulders with an uncharacteristically defeated sigh. ". . . I hate to be a Debbie Downer, but I'm not sure we're looking in the right place."

"Agreed." Riley rubbed her eyes, then pulled them wide open. "I think I'm gonna go back through cell tower records, see if we missed something there."

"You think the tracker was going over cellular networks, instead of GPS?"

Not really. But it was the only thing she could think of. "They had to know where Mac was gonna be somehow."

They had plenty of footage of the two shooters – the driver male, the passenger female – arriving at Ricarnello's. They got there about six minutes after Mac and Bozer did, and parked on the opposite side of the street. When it became apparent that Mac and Boze were dining in rather than getting carry out, they'd taken off and made long, languid loops around the neighborhood, never taking the same path twice, using turn signals, going the speed limit.

They passed back in front of Ricarnello's once every ten minutes or so, and when the parking spot in front of Mac's jeep had been vacated, it was too inviting a deal to pass up. The fisheye camera above Ricarnello's cash register showed them parking, and they weren't there more than three or four minutes before Mac and Bozer came onscreen. Bozer had stopped to grab a handful of mints and Mac had gotten the door.

At no point had the bikers taken off their helmets or used a phone. They were both in biker jackets and chaps, a common brand but a decent one, and their helmets had built in radio but no bluetooth. The Ducati didn't have plates. It was too hard to make out the weapon from Ricarnello's camera, in fact she couldn't even find the gun in the sea of black until the muzzle flashed.

Mac and Bozer hadn't been to Ricarnello's for months, and didn't regularly go out anywhere. She and Jill never picked up the bike tailing the jeep, and Mac had driven directly to the restaurant from the Phoenix. After they shot Mac – just the two shots, they didn't seem to be targeting Bozer, and Mac had already started to tackle him out of the way when he'd been hit - the bike had then taken a direct path to a very run-down Hispanic neighborhood, where there were no cameras, and near as she or Jill could determine, it never left.

Jill was working on tracking any and all vans or small trucks that were big enough to drive the bike onto to conceal it, but given that the majority of people in the neighborhood were working class, there were a lot of landscaping and construction vans. It was taking way too long.

Jill made a doubtful noise, dragging Riley back to the present. "I've watched the footage a hundred times. There's no way to clean it up, and there were so many people milling around . . . any one of them could have pulled a tracker off the Jeep. I'll . . . go through the Phoenix cell repeaters, see if we caught a bug connecting while the Jeep was here in the parking lot."

Riley gave a nod of thanks, and they worked quietly for a few minutes before the analyst across from her pulled off her glasses and held them up to the light, critically. She sighed again, and pulled a handkerchief from her back pocket. "I keep thinking there's a smear on my glasses, but I think it's actually my cornea that's dirty."

Riley nodded. "Yeah," was all she said. If she'd had to watch Mac get gunned down in the street a hundred times at a forensic level of detail, she'd probably feel pretty filthy too.

"It's just . . . I can't believe he survived that," Jill continued softly. "Have you heard, has there been any change . . . or . . .?"

Riley shook her head quickly. "Nah. He's still listed as critical." The listing, as well as the ICU rules, meant that . . . that the Mac sitting in the ICU could only have one visitor at a time, and it was common knowledge that that visitor was going to be Jack Dalton, always. She risked a quick glimpse at the camera they had installed in the hospital room, because according to that alert she'd gotten a few minutes ago, Jack Dalton was actually in the Phoenix building, down on level B5.

Where he was presumably finally, actually keeping watch over Mac, the real Mac, instead of that farce he'd been forced to act out for the past four days.

The room camera revealed that one of the agents assigned to the protection detail had taken the seat that Jack had vacated, and right there for everyone to see lay a lean, pale Angus MacGyver.

He was intubated and comatose, and the equipment that covered him made it hard to tell it wasn't actually Mac. They'd put a wig on him to give him Mac's hair, which was really the only part of his head you could see, and otherwise he was the right build, the right general shape.

If you just saw the camera view, even if you knew him pretty well, you couldn't immediately tell it wasn't Mac.

She hadn't gone into the room to see how the disguise looked up close; she'd spent her enforced shifts in the waiting room, doing her usual routine of bringing Jack coffee and non cafeteria food, and she'd probably spent a grand total of an hour with him in the past ninety-six. Jack looked the part. Tired. Worn. Worried.

And underneath it all, tension thrummed through him. She had no doubt his exhaustion was real. They were all tired of waiting.

Not waiting for 'Mac' to wake up – the poor guy serving as Mac's body double was for all intents and purposes braindead, he probably would have already been unplugged if they hadn't needed him – but for the trap to spring. For those two assholes to come to the hospital, and try to finish what they started.

But so far, nothing.

". . . I'm not seeing any unusual activity here," Jill murmured. "No new numbers or devices. Unless they were tracking Mac for a while?"

Riley put on a bracing smile and stretched. "Look, it's after nine. I'll cross reference the last two weeks with the cell towers near Ricarnello's, and if we get a hit that's not a legitimate employee cellphone, I'll send it on. But you don't need to stay here for that."

The other analyst gave her a suspicious look. "Are you throwing me out so you can pull another all-nighter?"

Riley liked Jill. She really did. But right now she was more worried about Jack, and she knew there was no way she could monitor him without the other analyst picking up on it. "I promise that I'll leave as soon as I get the results. And you can throw me out tomorrow night. Deal?"

The woman narrowed her eyes, and her dark, thick-rimmed glasses gave the look more power than it would have otherwise had on such a young face. "You know I can cut off your remote access."

Riley snorted. "You can try."

It took a few minutes, but eventually Jill started to gather her things, setting up a few scans of her own to run before she slipped her phone into her back pocket. "Seriously, if you find something –"

Riley nodded without taking her eyes off the screen. "I will. Really," she added, when it didn't look like Jill was totally buying it. And she meant it. If she found a shred of actionable intel on the current location of those sons of bitches, she'd scream it from the rooftops.

The other woman nodded, putting a hand on her shoulder in passing, and Riley gave her a smile and fished her earbuds out of her bag. She put them in, but didn't start any audio, waiting until the door hissed closed and following Jill's progress over the cameras, making sure she was actually leaving.

Once she was reasonably confident she wasn't going to be disturbed, Riley brought up the cameras in B5, Lab 2.

The lab was fairly dark. Jack had chosen to only turn on the under-cabinet lighting, so the entire place looked even more like a morgue than usual. Technically Lab 2 was one of their cryo labs, where any plant or animal material could be stored indefinitely at nearly any temperature desired between -130 Celsius all the way up to 200 Fahrenheit. But everyone knew what the seven foot by two foot drawers were for, particularly because there were four of them.

It wasn't often that the Phoenix had to store bodies, and the lab was rarely if ever used. It also wasn't on the same floor as Medical, which is why she'd set up an alert on all accesses to Lab 2. No one would be going in there unless they were looking for something.

And so far, no one had. The access log showed no activity from anyone other than Jack or Matty.

Jack was leaning against one column of drawers, his arms folded loosely over his chest, and beside him, the top drawer of the second column had been opened, and the bed pulled about a third of the way out. It was thankfully too dark to see much, and Riley hesitated before she activated audio.

"-iece a work. Even you'd have a hard time finding something to like about the guy."

His voice was soft, but steady. Almost conversational. Riley enhanced the grid that contained Jack's face, trying to make out his expression. Gauge for herself how he was doing.

"Rap sheet as long as my arm. Lotta abuse. Shakin' his family down for drug money." Jack shook his head. "It pisses me off, dude, that that guy's got your name on his bed." There was a long sigh. ". . . I'd hate for your old man to get wind of this, show up. If he's half as smart as you are, he'd see . . . yeah, well, if he's half as smart as you he'd know it wasn't you."

Jack blew out his cheeks, like he was waiting for a response. Like he heard one.

"I . . . I gotta tell you, man. Sometimes . . ." His voice tightened. "Sometimes, just outta the corner of my eye, dude . . . it's the muppet hair-"

It was too dark and grainy to make out detail, but she saw Jack reach up and scrub his eyes.

"Ah, fuck. I forgot how much this hurts." The words shook, and Riley bit her lip. ". . . I haven't cried this much in a long time. Not since pop . . ." He made a sound, maybe a chuckle. "Hope he's found you by now, straightened you out some. Ain't had time to go by and see him, but I figure he'd know by now. He's seen you enough."

Jack fell silent after that, head hanging low, and Riley wiped her eyes and was about to kill the feed and just go down there to him when he heaved a ragged little sigh, and looked at the body beside him. He'd pulled back the shroud, so that he could see Mac's face, or maybe it was so Mac could see him, and Riley was secretly grateful that the camera couldn't pick up much of it.

"We haven't found those bastards yet, but we will." His voice was a little stronger than before. "I know you'd prefer 'em in cuffs, but . . . I'll be straight with ya, partner, that ain't gonna happen." He shook his head, then scrubbed his face again. "After that . . . I'll getcha where you need to go. I remember," he added softly.

A small hand touched her elbow, and Riley shot off the stool with a shout. Her earbuds were yanked from her ears, and she found a somewhat apologetic looking Matilda Webber standing on the other side of her stool.

"How is he?" she asked quietly.

Riley swallowed her heart back into her chest, more than a little embarrassed, and hastily wiped her face. "I, uh, he's . . ." She shook her head and tried very hard to get her game face back on. "He's talking to Mac."

For a split second, she wondered if Matty knew that was actually normal for Jack, and not a sign of psychosis, but the woman seemed to take it in stride, eyes on the monitor.

"And how are you?"

Riley took a slow breath, then let it out, and her voice finally sounded a little more like it should. "I'm tired and pissed."

The director couldn't hide a small smile at that. "Me too," she admitted. "Did you find anything?"

Riley reclaimed her seat, closing the stream from Lab 2 and going back to the analysis she and Jill had been working on. The latest cross-reference – two weeks of Phoenix cell repeater history versus the connected devices in the area of Ricarnello's at the time of the attack – showed only two matches. Mac's phone and Bozer's phone.

Riley closed it with a sigh. "No," she admitted. "We still don't know how they tracked Mac down. We still can't find the bike. Jill spent all day trying to enhance the footage we got from Ricarnello's, but she couldn't get anything on the bike, on the shooters, or any proof of a tracker being removed from the jeep."

The director was quiet a moment. "Show me."

Riley did as she was told, and brought up the fisheye view again. Riley hadn't watched it as many times as Jill had, but she still knew every frame by heart. The bike pulled into the space in front of Mac's jeep. She let it play, knowing Matty was watching every pedestrian, every passing car, every reflection in the window.

The problem was, the camera was for spotting employees robbing the cash register, not for watching the street outside the restaurant. The fisheye lens distorted things, not to mention the resolution was consumer level. Jill had tried every trick she knew, and some tricks even Riley hadn't known.

Eventually Bozer and Mac appeared, and Bozer grabbed a handful of little baggies of mints – butter mints, her absolute favorite – while Mac backed into the door, grinning. The two of them disappeared briefly on the other side of the doorframe, and then appeared in the window, walking towards the jeep.

The bike moved sharply, bouncing off the front of the Jeep, and the rear passenger turned. Riley knew the gun was at the woman's waist, which made the shots that much more impressive, and harder for passers by – or her target – to recognize the danger. Still, she hadn't even finished turning before Mac had realized something was off, and he threw himself in front of Bozer as the two shots were fired.

The bike peeled off right after the second shot, and the shattering glass of the restaurant's front window obstructed the view momentarily. The boys were too close to the storefront to see much besides Mac's legs, but then Bozer's head and upper body appeared, and it was clear he was working on Mac.

Riley let it play until the paramedics got there. It took less than five minutes; Ricarnello's was only a few blocks from the Java Joint, which was a well loved local chain, favored by first responders for their highly caffeinated Java Jolt beverage. It was nothing short of a miracle that LA paramedics had reached and started working on Mac less than five minutes after he was shot, and –

And it wasn't fast enough.

"Pause it."

Riley roused herself from her thoughts and did so, looking at the frame. The paramedics had dispersed the crowd, slightly. She and Jill had tried all day to get a good enough picture of any of those people for facial recognition software, to no avail.

"That guy in the teal shirt." Matty pointed, and Riley gave her all the zoom they could. The director actually turned to frown at her, and Riley threw up her hands.

"Now you understand why we're so frustrated."

The older woman huffed out an irritated sigh. "Take it back to right after the window shatters."

They watched for the teal shirt, and sure enough, he was there almost immediately, smartphone in hand. But he wasn't the only one. It was just before the dinner rush, there were six people gathered around Bozer within the first sixty seconds he was out there, and four of them had their phones out, either taking pictures or filming.

"What in the hell is wrong with people?" Matty demanded.

Riley understood her disgust. "There were seven calls made to 911 dispatch from that immediate area within the first two minutes of the gunshots, if that makes you feel any better."

More good Samaritans than assholes.

"Did you check social media-"

"Yeah, I found one video on Youtube and took it down." It was no secret that Mac had gotten shot; the shooter had to know she'd hit him fair and square. Matty hadn't ordered her to search the entire internet and strip any images of it. But the video of him, laying there on the sidewalk, Bozer holding onto him for dear life –

That asshole had actually posted it as a commentary on black/white race relations in LA. A white guy getting shot and a black guy helping him. It was just so far beyond disrespectful – minimizing Bozer and Mac to nothing more than skin tone - she couldn't take it.

Matty glanced at her again. "Do you still have a copy?"

Riley nodded. "Jill analyzed it. It's just Bozer and Mac, no useful reflections, no other spectators, and it's shot Cloverfield style." She pulled it up anyway, letting it play for a few seconds. Mostly it was the side of Bozer's face, and a few dips to Mac's.

"Who shot this?"

Riley went back to the fisheye footage and indicated the black gentleman in the very bright white kicks with an LA Laker's ball cap on backwards. He was standing to the left of the guy in the teal shirt.

Riley flipped back to the footage, watching the right side of the frame. Sure enough, during one of his nauseatingly unsteady fumbles, he caught the teal guy's phone.

That guy's phone was perfectly steady. It looked like a Galaxy S8.

Matty was still staring at the blurry image. "How many people have called the hospital for Mac's condition?"

She and Jill had been monitoring that since the second the body double had been placed in a room. "Today it was four. We vetted all of them." One newspaper, two Phoenix employees – one from Europe – and one of Mac's neighbors.

"Show me."

Riley did.

Matty took another step towards the projector screen, still glaring at the man in the teal shirt, frozen up in the right-hand corner.

Neither biker had pulled out a phone. If Mr. Teal had been there specifically to get proof of the hit, he'd have to send it somewhere, or publish it somewhere. Riley hesitated, then she started up a VPN and launched Tor.

Matty watched for a few seconds without comment, even when the search string came up with hits. Riley cleared her throat.

"You, uh, may want to give me a few minutes to wade through this-"

"This isn't the first snuff film we've watched together," Matty replied tartly.

Riley knew Matty was trying to distract her, lighten the mood a little, and she sorted the videos by posted date. Some were too dark, and she could tell from the screen grab they could be safely bypassed. Far too many were in bright sunlight.

"Does that say three _hundred_ results?!"

"In the last four days," Riley confirmed. "On this site."

Matty turned, this time fully around, and really looked at her. "Riley . . . do you do this often?"

She kept parsing through the list, removing the obvious. "Look for videos of my friends being murdered? Or just people in general?"

It was sharp, maybe sharper than she intended, and Matty let her silence speak volumes. Riley kept right on sorting.

". . . where do you think we find footage of American soldiers being beheaded? I'm probably on Tor twice a week tracking down the bad guys."

"Like this?"

"Like this," she confirmed. She had whittled it down to a reasonable number, and Riley went back to the top and started each one, moving on to the next usually in the first couple seconds. "Most of your analysts can do this."

Not that most of them did. But they could.

There were way too many people dying in the world, and way too many sick fucks streaming it online.

She had all the videos muted, which made the images a hell of a lot easier to watch and discard, and she'd started with the oldest first. She got a hit in the first twenty.

It certainly looked like it was shot from Mr. Teal's point of view. It was much more smoothly done, in high def. She could see individual teeth on the zipper of Mac's jacket, Jill might even be able to read Mac's lips, figure out what he'd been trying to tell Bozer. Maybe he knew who'd shot him-

If this had been used as the proof of the hit, maybe the killers hadn't shown up at the hospital yet because they _knew_ Mac had died before the paramedics ever laid a hand on him.

What looked like the toe of a blindingly white sneaker popped into the bottom left corner.

"Pause it."

Riley did as she was told, very carefully not looking at the two subjects in the center, but the edges of the frame.

"Send me a copy of this. And can you tell who else has accessed it?"

Riley examined the metadata while it was downloading. "It's been viewed a few hundred times. I can break it down generally by geographical region, but getting specific will take a lot of time."

Matty was staring at the image. "Can you tell me what phone number uploaded it?"

She thought about that a second. " . . . yeah, I think I can." She knew the make of the phone, she had the cell tower records, and there'd be enough metadata in the stream to marry it up to a specific one.

"Do it."

-M-

See Author's Notes in the final chapter.


	2. Chapter 2

Standard disclaimers apply. I don't own any of these characters, please don't sue.

-M-

"Alpha, this is Bravo, in position."

Samantha readied her weapon; she'd traded up to an M4 at Jack's insistence and the assault rifle felt foreign and heavy in her hands. Across the doorway from her, Jack Dalton, clad in the same night vision tech and holding the same rifle, readied his weapon as well, then gave her a nod. The hand supporting the barrel of the rifle held up three fingers, and silently counted down.

When his fist closed, the power to the block blinked out. Cage reached out and turned the doorknob – she'd picked the lock moments before – and he dashed into the darkened opening. At the same time, in her ear came a quiet, urgent whisper.

"Breach!"

Jack took the left side, and Cage moved to the right, across a narrow hallway. The house was a sleepy little two-story in a largely Hispanic suburb of Phoenix, of all places. The décor and furniture was what she'd expect, and there was no sign of anyone in the small living room. There was a closed door, to the right, and Samantha was about to check it when there was a single pistol shot, almost smothered by a much softer burst of fire.

A three burst round fired from a suppressed M4.

"One down." It was Jack. His voice was clipped and clinical.

"One down, copy," came the reply, and Samantha sharpened her attention, and tried the door.

It opened into the breakfast nook of the kitchen, and Cage stuck her head in just enough to see that Bravo team had breached the back and were in the process of clearing the kitchen. They acknowledged each other, and she withdrew, closing the door softly behind her and falling back to the main hallway.

There was motion on the stairs – Jack, moving ahead without her. Cage clamped down on any verbal protest, she just followed him as he snaked his way around the landing and up the second half-flight. He saw her as he made his turn, then jerked his chin towards his left, and Samantha silently did as he directed, and scanned the two closed doors on that side of the hall.

One was much narrower than the other – possibly an attic or closet. The other was almost certainly a bedroom.

She edged closer to the larger door, listening intently. No sound from inside. She carefully tried the knob – not locked. Cage waited a beat, then threw the door open and put her back to the wall.

No sound. No one fired a shot.

Samantha kept her back to the wall, easing around the doorframe, and found herself in a modest bedroom. There was a duffel on the bed, half packed, and the desk under the window had at least four different sniper rifles, in various stages of disassembly. There was also what looked like a small stack of passports and a couple neat piles of cash, US denomination, and she cleared the room, ripping open the closet door.

No one. It was empty.

She turned back to the passports, making sure that she was getting everything on the body cam, and across the hallway, there was a single gunshot.

"Alpha, come in!"

Cage was back across the hallway in a flash. Two doors were open, and she was about to enter the first one when her earbud popped.

"Two down." Jack might as well have been reporting the weather. "Bring up the lights. Everyone, kill your NVDs." 

After a brief moment, power was restored to the house with an audible clunk, and Cage flipped up the visor on her night vision goggles. The hallway light wasn't on, but the second bedroom light was, and she almost ran into Jack as he was exiting. His arm was resting lightly on his rifle, and there was fine blood spatter on his face and tac vest.

"Jack-"

"Not mine," he said curtly, slipping past her without another word, and Cage stared after him a moment before she glanced into the room.

The male suspect was sprawled in the far corner beside a chest of drawers, mouth agape and at an angle that indicated his jaw was broken. Blood poured in a thin, uninterrupted string over his bottom lip. The spatter pattern on the wall finished painting the picture, and Cage examined the angle of the pistol in the dead man's hand for a long moment.

"All teams, report in."

"Bravo team, standing down."

"Charlie team, standing down."

Cage waited a beat, then raised her own voice. "Alpha team, standing down." She turned and made her way back down the stairwell. Most of the lights on the first floor were on, the rest of the tac teams doing a quick visual sweep for anything else out of the ordinary, and Samantha strode back down the hallway, ducking into the first room Jack had cleared.

At first she didn't see anything, just a formal sitting room of sorts with an incredibly tacky couch making an L in the middle of the room. Behind it, she found the female suspect. She'd been wearing a vest, and taken two hits just above it, at her collarbone. She was also very clearly dead.

And what Cage was seeing, the rest of Ops was seeing.

"What the hell just happened?" Matty demanded in her ear, and Samantha sighed silently, moving back into the main hallway where Dalton was giving orders to half of Charlie team.

The agent – not one that Samantha recognized – turned away and headed out the front door, and Jack moved to follow before Cage caught him by the shoulder. She was taken off guard by the tension in his frame, and he turned on her with a glare.

"What happened?" She intentionally kept a neutral tone.

Everything about Jack's expression was cold. His eyes, the set of his mouth, half-hidden by a week's worth of scruff. Even the way his fingers tightened on the rifle, just slightly. He was clearly bracing for a fight.

"They were waitin' for us. She had decent cover and a vest and I didn't feel like wasting time. Her partner musta realized he was screwed. He ate a bullet before I could secure him."

"Jack, which part of 'we need one of them alive' wasn't clear to you?" Matty's voice snapped into both their coms. Samantha had a feeling it was just them, because one of the agents passing by didn't so much as break stride. "They were just the hired guns. Without one of them to roll over on who contracted them-"

"What do you want, an apology?" It was almost a growl. "Hold your breath."

Jack ripped out his com, letting it dangle by the neck of his vest, and marched out of the house without another word.

Cage remained facing him, keeping him on her cam. "Director-"

She heard an angry sigh. "Let him go."

Samantha obeyed the order, glancing at the coffee table in the sitting room. She strode back over and picked up a smartphone in her gloved hand, clicking the power button, but the phone was locked. On a whim, she started to carry it around to the back of the sofa.

"Don't." Matty's voice was sharp. "Leave it for forensics. She was wearing a vest, and he was packing up. They knew we were coming. We don't know what safeguards they may have already set up."

Cage was pretty sure a fingerprint swipe wouldn't trigger a phone wipe. "How far out's the team?"

"Four minutes. We had them just down the block." It was Riley this time. It was hard to tell on coms how she was feeling about what they'd just witnessed.

And what _had_ they just witnessed?

"Samantha, what's your assessment?"

Of course Matilda was thinking along the same lines. "About the male suspect shooting himself?" They'd seen exactly what she'd seen. "I suppose it's possible. If he broke his own jaw putting his gun into his mouth. What did Jack's camera show?"

"Nothing. It must have gotten knocked to the side in the struggle, because all we saw was the wall." She could almost hear the air quotes. They both knew his camera hadn't gotten knocked aside – at least not by the suspect.

Even knowing it would make finding the person or persons ultimately responsible for MacGyver's death more difficult, it certainly appeared that Jack had intentionally killed both the assassins.

And it also appeared that killing Mac's murderers hadn't been the cathartic release Jack had hoped for. Not if his current emotional state was any indication.

"Cage, go catch up with Dalton. I want you both back in California ASAP."

-M-

Riley didn't let herself hesitate for even a moment, banging authoritatively on the door.

It was around noon, the Tuesday after the op in Arizona that had gone pear-shaped. Riley knew he was home; his phone was there and when she'd remotely activated the cameras she'd caught sight of a shadow moving past. Near as she could tell, he hadn't used it since Matty had suspended him - he wasn't responding to texts or calls.

But at least he was keeping it charged. Keeping it an option, when he was ready to use it.

There was no sound from inside, and Riley banged on the door again. "I can do this all day, old man," she called, just in case he was afraid she was Matty or Cage come to check on him.

He should know better than to expect Bozer. Wilt was squirreled away in a safehouse that even she didn't have the address to. Riley was half convinced Matty was keeping him locked up in her own basement for safekeeping.

Riley pounded on the door again, lending credence to her threat, and sure enough, she heard a quiet shuffling sound, and then a solid thud on the other side of the door. It didn't open.

Riley gave the peephole a strange look, then peered through it, trying to make out whether there was even a shadow on the other side. She couldn't see crap, and nothing else happened. Riley frowned. "Or I can just break in through the balcony door," she offered.

There was a soft scrabbling sound, and then she heard the deadbolt draw back. The door opened just a hair, and Riley shoved a foot against it so he couldn't close it. Then she saw that it was probably unnecessary.

"Jesus, Jack," she breathed.

He was leaning forehead first against the wall beside the door, eyes half closed. Jack was wearing pants, thank god, but no shirt, and she could smell him from the hallway. His bare feet were spread wide, clearly trying to keep his balance, and his eyes, crusted and bloodshot, shifted to her without blinking.

"Jack," she tried again, when he didn't say anything, and she pushed on the door. He still tried to keep it closed with his left hand, and she actually shoved him fully back onto his feet before he stumbled backwards a little, and she managed to squeeze in.

He took a few more steps back, reeling, and then sighed through his nose. "Get outta here. I ain' got time f'this." His voice was slurred and hoarse.

"Yeah, I can see that." There were at least half a dozen liquor bottles, most in various states of just about empty, scattered throughout the room. The TV was on, a young Bruce Willis was cajoling an angry blonde, but it was muted. The carcass of a pizza box was on the counter, next to three bottles of wine that she figured were also probably dry, and a glance at his bedroom showed an empty beer bottle laying forgotten in the doorway.

All he was missing was the fucking ashtray, and it was like she'd just walked in off the bus to find that Elwood had crawled back home.

Jack shambled past her, heading in a kind of diagonal shuffle for the much closer brown leather recliner rather than the barber's chair, and he half sat, half collapsed. It didn't look comfortable, but he didn't seem bothered. He was facing the TV but didn't seem to really see it.

Riley just shook her head, and started collecting the empties. It was not the first time she'd had to sober a person up. Just the first time that person was Jack Dalton.

He didn't respond, or try to stop her until she went to grab the half-empty bottle of Jameson by his chair. His hand shot out and caught her wrist with the speed of a snake striking, and Riley actually yelped in surprise.

"Jack – ow, dude, let go-"

She gave her wrist a sharp tug that got her nowhere, and his eyes shifted up to her again, almost as if seeing her for the first time. They were glassy, under the crust of too many tears and not enough sleep, and frighteningly empty.

". . . I ain' done wi'that."

"Yeah?" She braced her feet properly and gave her wrist another good yank, breaking his grip where it was weakest, near his thumb. She got free, spilling a little of the whiskey on her jeans in the process.

Awesome.

"Well, I think it's had enough of you," she continued, stalking across the apartment for the kitchen. "Is this what you've been doing all weekend? Crawling inside a bottle?"

She could tell that he was watching her, but he didn't respond, and she upended the bottles in the sink, including the Jameson. Once he sobered up there was nothing stopping him going back out to the liquor store, but at least she could get him clear headed enough to make the decision consciously.

His fridge was thankfully mostly empty of beer, but it was also empty of most everything else, and she eventually tracked down a couple eggs that were only expired a week. His freezer was in slightly better shape, and she pulled out a frozen loaf of bread. Protein and carbs. A drunk's best friend.

She put both her discoveries on the kitchen counter, grabbing the fridge door to close it, and couldn't help a startled jump when she realized Jack was standing literally right there.

"What're y'doin'." His voice was flat and his breath sour, and for the first time she could remember, he wasn't wearing his saint medallion.

Riley stared up at him, not unaware that he weighed twice what she did and if he fell, getting him off the floor was going to be next to impossible. "I'm making you breakfast, old man."

He placed a hand, very deliberately, flat against the freezer door. "I ain' hungry."

"Yeah?" She turned her back on him – and hated that it felt a little like a very stupid thing to do – and went in search of a pan. "How's that liquid diet working out for you?"

"You need t'leave."

Single minded drunk. She'd dealt with those before too. "I will, Jack, just as soon as you eat something and we get you to bed."

She found a small omelet pan in the cabinet above the stove, and set it down on a burner, and that was as far as she got. Jack swiped it off the stove, making the pan fly across the counter to slam into the clear acrylic cannister in which he kept his coffee. The plastic resin cracked into a hundred pieces, spilling coffee grounds everywhere, and Riley found herself on the other side of the kitchen, staring at him incredulously.

He studied the mess a moment, almost like he couldn't figure out how it had happened, and then he raised a shaking hand to his face, rubbing the bridge of his nose. When he spoke again, his voice was just as hoarse as it had been before. ". . . y'need t'leave, Riley."

" . . . Jack?" He'd come within a hair's breadth of actually hitting her.

"I ain' fit company righ' now." He left his hand on his face, covering his eyes, and she just stared at him.

Elwood was the violent drunk. Not Jack. She'd seen him wasted and still be gentle as a kitten. He'd never raised a hand to Diane even accidentally, even when she'd wake him up in the middle of the night. He always had control. Always.

"Jack," and she swallowed her voice steady, "you need to eat something, and you need to go to bed. Okay?"

He took an unsteady breath. " . . . ged'outta here, Riley. I can't do this righ' now."

She bit her lip, and held out a hand. "Hey, it's okay, here, just -"

" _GET OUT_!" he roared, his arm slicing the air in front of him, and she flinched back into the counter. His hand was no longer covering his face, and –

And it was unrecognizable.

He sucked in a breath, his chest heaving, and he grabbed the edge of the stove so forcefully he actually shifted the appliance several inches. She would have backed away more if she could, but he'd penned her in the U-shaped space, and Riley briefly considered vaulting the passthrough to get out of range.

Jack took another deep breath, and then another, and then collapsed heavily against the counter. ". . . sorry . . .'m sorry . . ."

Riley didn't say anything.

He looked up at her, his expression now one of devastation, and he backed up further, into the side of the fridge, wrapping his arms tightly around his chest. _Trapping them_ , she realized with a start.

Making himself safe for her to walk by.

"Please, please, 'm sorry-" He kept repeating it, eyes squeezed shut, and Riley couldn't get anything past the lump in her throat. She pushed herself away from the counter, hurrying past him out of the kitchen, and she didn't let her face crumple until her back was to him. She held her breath to keep from making a sound, but water caught in her eyelash, and she swiped it away angrily before anyone could see.

She tried to blink her sight clear, and her eyes fell on the reason he'd sat so awkwardly in his chair.

There was a nine mil tucked into the worn leather cushion.

She sucked in a quiet breath and grabbed it, too intent on getting out of the apartment to even think about why it was there, or the fact that he had half a dozen others just like it. She shoved the gun into the back of her jeans and groped almost blindly for the door, pulling it gently shut behind her. She could still hear his apology ringing in her ears as she tripped down the flight of stairs, desperate to get to her car.

She fumbled with the key, almost breaking it off in the lock, and then she was safe inside, and pulled the door shut. Riley was suddenly twelve years old again, huddled on her bed, terrified, listening to the yelling, the slamming, wishing they would just stop fighting –

It took her forever to catch her breath, and she ran her thumb over the steering wheel, trying to make her hand stop shaking. She raised her eyes through the windshield to Jack's balcony, half afraid she'd see him there, but there was no movement behind the glass. Riley fished her phone out of her jacket pocket, hesitating for a long moment before she pulled up an app, and accessed his phone's cameras.

The phone was wherever it had been before, the ceilings in his apartment all looked the same. He wasn't in the frame, but the microphone was able to pick up sound.

He was still apologizing.

-M-

The phone buzzed.

It hadn't been doing that much, anymore. And he had actually requested something, was actually expecting a response.

Well, not expecting one. Not a response. Or at least not a response that he actually wanted.

It was probably Jill telling him that she couldn't tell him anything. He wondered if she'd tattle to Riles. How she'd feel about being bypassed.

Jack was not looking forward to facing her.

The phone stopped buzzing. There was no follow-up. No voicemail message.

Jack took a sip of the lukewarm beer, and watched Bruce picking glass out of the bottom of his feet.

 _I know how you feel, man. I really do._

Behind him, two measured knocks rang out.

Jack didn't react. Wasn't Riley. Matty was more a three knock kinda gal. Bozer wouldn't forgive him for what he'd done to Riles, it'd be a lot more aggressive. And if it was Jill, she could just shove the papers under the door.

He took another sip of the beer, hearing every line Bruce was saying even though the TV was muted.

Maybe he'd finally watched them all too many times, worn the magic off. Even Bruce Willis couldn't save him from this.

If the volume had been on, he might not have heard the metallic rustling, like a mouse in tiny elven chain mail was scurrying along the wall by the door. He didn't catch the doorknob turning, but the faint sucking sound as the weatherstripping along the bottom of the door scraped the threshold was unmistakable.

Jack rose and turned in one smooth movement, and the trigger was quarter-pulled before it occurred to him that he didn't have the first clue who the fuck was standing in his doorway.

From about twenty feet away on a foggy night, she could have been Sarah. Slightly wavy, auburn brown hair, about the right length. Light laughing eyes. Her jeans were painted on, and the tan jacket had a silk scarf wound carelessly beneath the collar. She didn't even look at the gun. Instead, she gave the place a once over. A precisely penciled eyebrow arched when she took in the wooden picnic table, and she entered the apartment, using a slim boot to nudge the door closed.

"Well, this explains a few things," she murmured, almost to herself, and then gave him the same assessment she'd given his place. "Come on, Jack. You wouldn't shoot an unarmed woman . . . would you?"

Unlike the guy behind him, who would use this opportunity to escalate the threat by cocking the gun, Jack lived in the real world, where raised guns were already primed, and the only further warning she was going to get was an actual bullet. "You got five seconds."

She smiled at him, with the same warmth and humor Sarah would when she was trying to charm a mark. "Oh? You have somewhere to be? Looks like Firebird's giving you the cold shoulder, Mr. Dalton."

He almost put one in her arm, just for the hell of it.

"Now you got two."

She tilted her head a little, with the same winsome smile. "Didn't peg you for someone who would sit at home like a good little dog while your old team hangs you out to dry. Heard anything from that pretty little analyst?"

He crossed the distance between them in two strides, and her eyes flashed as he pinned her none too gently against the door with his left forearm. He dug the gun into her side, giving her a second to think about how painful gut wounds could be, but it wasn't fear that crossed her sharp features.

"Now you got zero."

She took a deep breath, her chest expanding against his arm, and he felt the corner of something firm and sharp brush his bare stomach. He didn't look to see what it was; too warm and flexible to be a knife, and it didn't matter anyway. He could still take her before she did more than break the skin.

"We both know the Phoenix is done with you. And you're not going to get very far tracking the people who killed your widdle partner on your own. When you tire of waiting for table scraps, give me a call." She dragged the firm, pointy something gently across his skin – business card, he guessed. He pressed the gun harder into her lower ribs in reply, and she gave a musical little laugh.

"This is going to be fun, Jack."

He considering pistol whipping that assured little smirk right off her face. Instead, he changed his hold, grabbing her by the collar of her jacket and hauling her off the door. She didn't resist as he planted her firmly on the wall beside it, and he pulled open the door just enough to ensure the hallway outside was clear. Then he gestured sharply with the pistol. "Don't come back."

Her smile settled into something a little more considering, and she held up a slick white rectangle of cardboard – definitely a business card – between two of her slender fingers. She tossed it with a well-practiced flick of her wrist; it landed smoothly on the wooden picnic table. Her now-empty fingers waved in a farewell gesture, and she glided out the door.

Jack let the door slam, keeping an eye on her progress until she eased herself into a rental Lexus and pulled into traffic. Only then did he tuck the gun into the back of his jeans, and he swiped his phone off the side table, unlocking it.

One missed call, from a blocked number. Probably her.

Jill hadn't responded to his text.

Jack stared at the phone a moment, considering his options. His thumb hovered over the text box. He could request a trace, track her back to wherever the fuck she came from, find out exactly how she knew what she knew. He might be on administrative leave, and totally in the dark on the investigation, but he was still an agent, and still had physical access to the building.

Still had access to Mac.

For now.

Jack felt his teeth start to grind, and he dropped the phone back onto the table and went to find another beer.

-M-

There was a firm knocking sound on the other side of the room.

Riley recognized it; it was one of the default texting sounds of an Android phone, and she raised an eyebrow at the analyst on the couch across from her. Jill, for her part, glanced at the phone, then up at her, as if just realizing the noise was audible to the rest of them.

Riley indicated the device with her chin. "You factory reset your phone?"

Jill shook her head. "No, it's . . . for my mom. She thinks it's hilarious, and it kinda freaks out dad's Pomeranian." Riley tried to picture a world where someone as smart as Jill's parents must be thought two year old texting defaults were funny, _and_ owned a wind-up dog.

"Don't ask," Jill added, swiping the notification off the screen, and they both turned back to the front of the room to see that Matty hadn't even noticed the exchange. She was still studying the map. It showed the outline of every continent and country represented as smooth blue lines on a black background, upon which hundreds of thousands of little green dots were appearing and launching themselves over the oceans in an overwhelmingly chaotic 3D version of Missile Command.

Several dozen of the signals were yellow, and even fewer orange.

They were waiting for a red one. Red meant the packet had enough of the markers to most likely be a communication from the broker who had engaged and arranged the payment for the assassins. Once they traced back the packets, they could get a physical location, and pay the guy a little visit.

And hopefully get some answers. Like who had paid for the hit, and why.

And then maybe – _maybe_ – they could finally do right by Mac. Get him out of that freezer and . . . well, she honestly didn't know. He didn't seem like the kind of guy who wanted to be embalmed and laid out for everyone to see. He'd probably wanted to donate his organs, but she was pretty sure that wasn't possible anymore. Maybe cremated, and put in an urn beside his mother's grave? Donated to science? Laid out at the Body Farm? Just planted somewhere under a tree sapling?

Mac probably had a will, but the farce at the hospital had been moved to a private clinic, and they were still pretending he was alive, so it wasn't like she even knew who the executor was.

Probably Bozer.

Riley kept her eyes glued to her screen. Bozer replied to maybe one out of every three texts she sent him. Matty was tight-lipped about his location, and she was tempted to just trace his phone, but there was no way to do that without tipping off Jill.

Near as Riley could tell, Jill hadn't wised up yet. She still thought Mac was alive, being kept in a medically induced coma. When she finally found out – when all of them found out – it was going to be like losing him all over again.

It was hard enough trying to keep tabs on Jack without the other analyst picking up on it. She figured she'd managed to keep most of those alerts on the down low, but trying to track someone like Bozer would send up all kinds of red flags. There were still almost a dozen Phoenix employees and contractors on Matty's list, and if any one of them tried to find Bozer, well –

Then they'd know that whoever had put the hit out on Mac had inside help.

But she knew the isolation had to be killing him. Wherever Bozer was, with nothing but time to think, and no closure –

None for any of them.

None for Jack.

As if the raging asshole could actually hear her thoughts, a small red alert popped up near her system tray.

 _Alert: [847] US Immigration LAX – 357951258; Dalton Jack Wyatt_

Riley glanced at it, then closed it, and casually windowed over to the map where she was tracking Jack's phone.

It was still in his apartment.

Which begged the question, why did his passport just get scanned at LAX?

Across from her, Jill's phone knocked three times.

The other analyst ignored it, frowning a little at her screen, and then, almost like she sensed it, she glanced back up, catching Riley's gaze. She looked apologetic.

"Sorry, I'll –" She scooped up the phone, probably to mute the noise, and Riley very carefully did not chew her bottom lip.

Matty wasn't going to be very happy that it looked like Jack was sneaking off. Then again, if he'd really wanted to sneak, he wouldn't have used his own passport. Was this a breadcrumb? Did he just not give a shit if they knew he was skipping town? It wasn't like he was under house arrest, but –

But she was amazed he would leave, when they hadn't gotten a chance to even schedule Mac's funeral.

In fact, there was really only one reason he would.

"Matty." Riley pushed the alert onto the main screen. "Looks like Jack's headed out of town. He tell you where he was going?"

Her diminutive boss cocked her head to the side, in a way that let Riley know that no, he hadn't, and yes, she also found it peculiar.

"No, he didn't. He doesn't take my calls." She exhaled sharply. "Where's he headed? Someplace nice, I hope?"

"Uh . . ." Riley spent a few seconds looking up flight manifests. Then she felt her eyebrows shoot upwards. "Looks like El Salvador."

Both Matty and Jill stared at her, and Riley shrugged. "Don't look at me. I haven't talked to him in days."

"What's in El Salvador?"

"Besides volcanoes, surfing, and coffee farms?" Jill was typing. "Not much. It's seen an uptick in drug trafficking in the last few years, but we haven't picked up any recent chatter indicating anything major's on the horizon."

Riley did a quick reference, to see if Jack or Mac had ever been there on a mission, and came up with nothing.

"Do we know where he plans to stay?"

Riley did a little more checking. ". . . we do not," she finally answered. "His name isn't coming up at any of the major hotel chains or resorts, and he didn't book any lodging with the flight."

Matty glanced back at the map – this time at Central America. "Keep an eye on him, as much as you're able."

"You think he knows something we don't?" Jill glanced between them. "Nothing in our investigation had pointed anywhere near South or Central America."

"Well, I doubt he's there to catch some waves." Matty's tone was dry. "Get me a list of everything interesting going on there between now and the next three days."

-M-

There was a quiet knock on the door.

Jack scowled at the mirror. It wasn't the tux's fault – it was silk, lighter weight to accommodate the tropical climate, and someone had though to put a concealed pocket in the low-cut waistcoat. It had give in all the right places, even across his back and broad shoulders, and the cufflinks were fairly tasteful. Actually, the damn thing fit him like a glove.

Which was not awesome, since it wasn't his tux. It had been waiting for him in the closet, freshly pressed by the Sheraton Presidente San Salvador hotel. Along with a pair of highly polished oxford shoes, also in his size, with some extra cushioning and deep treads.

He heard the lock on the suite door click, and Jack tucked the XDM compact into his waistband, smoothing down the dinner jacket.

Flying commercial meant flying without a weapon, and the small, powerful pistol had also been waiting for him, just like the tux. It only gave him eleven plus one rounds, not counting the spare mag, but then again, if they had to shoot their way out, clearly they weren't doing it right.

"You ready, sweetie?"

A royal blue dress, in the same color as El Salvador's flag, glided into view behind him. It was clear they were meant to share the suite, but she hadn't been there when he'd arrived, and her hair and makeup were too perfect to have been outside in the humidity and the heat. Which meant she had her own hidey hole.

Jack tucked that detail away and rubbed his freshly shaved cheek as the woman he'd decided to call Not Sarah opened eyed him from head to toe. He turned and gave her the same treatment.

Stilettos, probably reinforced and the shoes were open topped so she could kick them off easily if she needed to. Thigh holster, but not a gun – maybe a knife? The sapphire bracelet had just enough extra gold around the setting to make him think it might be hinged.

Poison and blades. Definitely not Sarah's style.

Well, knives were her style. Poison, not so much.

"Aren't I a lucky girl."

Other than her offensive capabilities, the dress itself was a stretchy satin-like fabric, no corset and too fitted to conceal armor – or much of anything, really. Her hair was gathered into large, artful waves on the top of her head, so he could assume there were a few tools up there. He had a spare set of lock picks in his jacket pocket, just in case, and they both were carrying military grade flash drives. He didn't need to ask where she'd squirreled those away.

She tucked a small lock of hair behind a delicate ear, giving him a coy smile. "Are we leaving, or would you prefer to keep staring?"

Jack arranged what he hoped was a politely pleasant expression on his face, and gestured towards the door. "Ladies first."

She gave a little sigh, her brown eyes sparkling, and pivoted on those impossibly thin heels. Her movements were balanced and light, and she scooped up a matching clasp purse from the foyer table, as well as his room keycard.

"I presume you've read the packet?"

Jack let her approach, and she ran her fingers gently down his lapels, slipping the keycard into the interior pocket. He made a mental note to check himself for the bug he was quite certain had just slipped in there with it.

"I did," he confirmed, grudgingly lowering his voice. "Though I gotta say, not sure I look like an Arthur."

He wasn't going to complain, Arthur Grimwald, private investor and entrepreneur, was a hell of lot less embarrassing than some of the covers the Phoenix had given him over the years. He just couldn't shake the feeling he was going to be spending the rest of the evening trapped on her arm, responding to 'Artie.'

She smoothed his lapel back down, giving him an impish smile. "No. You're definitely an Art."

She was his wife, Catherine. They'd been married three years. They met in El Salvador, both expats, so they'd frequented the same area of the city and had the same coffee habits. No kids, high end apartment in the city.

Their presence at the Qatar Embassy was mostly business. The festivities were mainly held on the first floor, and the intelligence was on the third. He'd memorized the schematics, but it felt damn weird walking into enemy territory without coms.

Not Sarah – Catherine, he corrected himself – released him, and he stepped in behind her, getting the door. The suite was one of only a few on the hall, with a semi-private elevator that took them straight to the lobby. The Grimwalds came from old money, and the sedan waiting for them was refined and elegant, but not overly ostentatious.

Their driver – Jack silently christened him Jeeves – took the most commonly used route to the embassy, giving them a view of San Salvador, including a big-ass pillar atop which Jesus balanced like a circus acrobat on a beach ball of the planet. Mac would probably tell him-

Jack kept his eyes on the road after that.

If Catherine sensed his discomfort, she didn't say anything, and once they arrived, embassy staff got Catherine's door. He looped the car in time to offer his wife his arm, which she took with a warm, grateful smile, and they proceeded through the main doors.

He wasn't exactly clear on how the hell he was supposed to get the gun past security, but that little mystery cleared itself up as they were ushered past two uniformed technicians working feverishly on the metal detector. Very serious, swarthy men in suits much less fine than his were wanding the guests instead, and after Catherine passed through with flying colors – so the knife on her thigh was ceramic – she reached up to tuck that one errant strand of hair behind her ear again, touching her sapphire earing.

The wand passed over the small of his back without a squawk, and Jack inclined his head to the security guard and reclaimed his wife.

Once inside, the evening's schedule included mingling and heavy hors d'oeuvres followed by an address from two of the Council's ministers. They were seeking funding for infrastructure for the 2022 FIFA World Cup, and Central America took their football – which was fucking soccer, not red-blooded football like in a normal country – quite seriously.

Apparently while the ministers were here, they were also setting up the trade routes by which vast quantities of illicit drugs would also be making their way to the World Cup, as well as the two and a half million expats currently living there with nothing to do besides look at sand.

Details on the routes, participating cartels, and product were the target. In fact, if Jack didn't think too hard about it, there was nothing different about this op than any one of a hundred he'd done for the Phoenix over the years.

Except, of course, that he was pretty sure the end game was extortion and blackmail, rather than arrest and drug impounding.

And instead of getting a tiny little paycheck and a shitty 401k match, he was supposed to walk away with actionable intel on who ordered the hit on Mac.

So Jack wove Catherine through the crowds, greeting old friends, having polite pissing contests with other investors. She was always in his ear, identifying the players, and Jack let her run the room how she saw fit, keeping tabs on security instead, learning their patterns.

She wasn't Sarah, not by a mile. But she was _good_.

After an hour or so of carrying the same glass of champagne and pretending to appreciate art, he watched two of the Council's security guards withdraw, meaning they were clearing the route from the ministers' room to the party for the address. He'd watched them walk the route three times, so he knew which doors the ministers would enter. Jack wandered in the opposite direction, Catherine light on his arm, and once they cleared the main room she leaned fondly into him.

"Where the fuck are you going?"

He was headed to the very worst possible stairwell in the building. It was narrow, servant only, and led out to the loading docks, which meant it had been specifically designed to prevent unauthorized access to the upper floors. Every door in that stairwell could be locked down with a single alarm, as opposed to the more open staircases in the middle of the building.

"Unless you'd like to stay for the afterparty, honey, this is the way," he murmured back. Security on the ministers was simply too good, and he wasn't about to play Marco Polo without eyes and coms.

One of the serving staff came by with an empty tray, and Jack flagged him down and gratefully dropped off his half-empty champagne flute. He then collided with the poor kid when his wife caught a heel on the edge of one of the thick Turkish rugs, but he was successful in catching her. She apologized profusely to the young man, who had somehow managed not to drop the champagne flute, and then took a tentative step before wincing.

"I'm so sorry, sweetie, I think I may have hurt my ankle –"

Jack helped her to an ornate chair he hoped wasn't technically a piece of the art, and he dutifully knelt and inspected her ankle as the servant headed back to the party.

He handed her the guy's security badge, and she flashed him a look that clearly said they would be talking about this decision later. She flounced to her feet, and they proceeded into the back hallway of the embassy, linking the kitchens and staff areas to the entertaining portion of the building.

Getting into the stairwell wasn't terribly difficult, and it was exactly what it had looked like on the diagram. Narrow. He listened carefully, and hearing nothing, he went first, taking the stairs two at a time. If they encountered any traffic at all, that traffic was going to have a very unpleasant evening.

Catherine came up behind him with the badge, arching an eyebrow. "And the odds that the hired help has access to the administrative floors-"

"That guy was full time," Jack cut her off. And the lock flashed green and clicked.

Catherine stared at him a moment. "How did you know?"

Jack smirked and cracked the door. It opened up into the service hallway, and it was empty.

"After you."

There was very little activity on the floor, most of the staff were attending the ministers' address. Security was still around, but they were smoking, thus easy enough to avoid. Catherine moved with a surety that he followed without question into a corner office, and then she slipped behind the secretary's desk, rather than the officiate's, and Jack sharpened his attention.

She noticed his look, and gave him a sweet smile. "A girl's gotta keep a _few_ secrets." She pulled one of the flash drives from her bra, letting it do its thing, and he kept an eye on the hall, getting a feel for the timing of security's laps around the floor.

That she'd lied about the target didn't surprise him. She didn't trust him as far as she could throw him, and the feeling was mutual. He was just as likely to collect a bullet to the head at the end of this as he was a real lead on Mac's murderer.

"So uptight," she murmured, plucking the flash drive loose and promptly replacing it with another. "Relax, Art. This isn't for a grade."

He grunted, noting where the first USB drive ended up. "Isn't it?"

She made a show of considering it. "This deal was for a single transaction, but if you're interested . . ."

He studied her for a long moment, then crossed the room, silent on the thick carpeting, and she never took her eyes off him. For the first time that evening, he felt a real smile tugging at his lips, and she reciprocated it as he put a hand on the desk, and bent close enough to kiss her.

"Oh, I'm interested."

Her eyes flickered between his, and he smiled more broadly, and retrieved the first of the flash drives. She took a quick breath, arching into his touch, and he discovered there was a second thumb drive, which he also claimed.

That brought the count up to three. At least.

"I'm interested in finishing this gig and gettin' paid."

She caught his wrist as he started to extract the drives, and he let her, confident he had both the position and leverage to handle her. She didn't even try to take them back; instead, she placed a fingertip on one of his pulse points, and he took a second to wonder if she'd somehow gotten into that bracelet and he hadn't noticed.

"Not gonna buy me dinner first, cowboy?"

The computer monitor blinked, no longer showing that it was copying files, and Jack extricated his wrist and collected the final flash drive as well, straightening. The three drives went into the pocket in his waistcoat, which would be a little harder for her to pick. She never lost her smile, gracefully retaking her feet.

"So uptight," she repeated, almost to herself, and then gave a little sigh. "Shall we, sweetie?"

They used the same path to exit as they had to enter, though this time they had to retreat back up half a flight as someone scurried from the first floor to the second. The staff were trying to re-stage the refreshments, but a brief lull got them back onto the main floor without needing to ruin anyone else's night. Jack wiped and dropped the server's badge just inside the door as they exited the back stairwell, and they mingled back into the main room seamlessly.

They clapped politely with everyone else as the ministers finished their pitch, and Jack scooped a decadent chocolate something off a passing tray, presenting it to Catherine.

Her smile lit the room. "Why thank you, sweetheart."

Jack counted the minutes as they eased their way closer and closer to the embassy entrance. They hadn't tripped any alarms yet, and there were three other women wearing a dress the same color as Catherine's, but hanging around after the heist was never his style. It always went sideways, always. He had the intel, which meant she couldn't throw him to the wolves just yet, but she had to have made contingency plans of her own.

However, Catherine surprised him by staying on his arm, reminding him that they had that call with Singapore in forty minutes, and sure enough, the staff summoned Jeeves to the drive and even helped his wife into the sedan.

Even after the embassy gates were in the rear view mirror, Jack kept one eye on the traffic, and one on Not Sarah. She never went for whatever was in the bracelet, and aside from giving him amused looks now and again, she too kept an eye on the scenery.

He helped her from the sedan when they reached the hotel, and she waved her clutch at the semi-private elevator, using her room key to activate it. Once the doors closed he thought she'd make a move, but she didn't, and Jack blinked in surprise as he realized the elevator was really, actually playing a samba version of _The Girl From Ipanema_.

He almost laughed. Mac'd appreciate that-

It was a sobering thought, and it must have flashed across his eyes, because Not Sarah gave him a mildly inquiring look that he chose to ignore.

"Do you miss the boy scout?"

He refused the bait, watching the floors counting up.

She tilted her head, trying to catch his eye. "Oh, I don't mean it like that. I'm sure he was a very nice young man. Strong moral compass, right? Never even carried a gun, according to the file."

The elevator dinged, and at his gesture she stepped out of the elevator, heading towards the suite. Jack had no illusions the exchange would happen there; whoever she'd collected the data for, that would happen in her other room, if it happened in the hotel at all.

Belatedly it occurred to him that he might have actually already collected his payment. The extra flash drive.

She waved her clutch at the room, activating the lock, and let herself in. And still didn't make a move. She tossed the clutch on the foyer table, walking into the main room with her hands in her hair. She withdrew what looked like a chopstick and the whole pile came down, and Jack stayed near the door, keeping some distance.

She sighed, then rolled her neck gently. "So, what about that dinner you owe me?"

"You'll have to take a rain check," he replied, giving the rest of the suite a once-over. There'd been no one in the hallway, but given the small number of suites on the floor, that wasn't necessarily a red flag. "Where's the drop?"

"Here," she replied immediately. "My employer will meet us downstairs. Art always orders a drambuie as a nightcap."

"Does he."

She turned to him, her brown hair falling in soft waves to frame her face, and stepped out of her heels. "Relax, Jack. The boy scout is gone. It's just us adults."

She approached him with a suggestive swish of her hips, and he undid the button on the dinner jacket, giving himself a little more room to maneuver. "Pass."

The same musical laugh. "I'll buy you dinner."

"Not hungry."

"Jack, Jack, Jack." She came to stand in front of him, but the most threatening thing she did was just extend a slender hand, palm up. "No one's listening. There's no eye in the sky. No more protocols. No more action reports. You do the job, and you get paid. That's it."

He looked down at her hand, and then back up to her face. "I'll just hold onto them a little while longer."

She gave a little sigh, and made to brush his lapel. He caught her wrist, and was completely unprepared for a no holds barred headbutt then sent him staggering back. Even without the heels she was only a few inches shorter than he was, and he found himself warding off impressively powerful blows. She grabbed him by the lapels – the goddamn dinner jacket – and Jack twisted to avoid what promised to be a punishing blow to his little boys.

He bent at the waist and slipped out of the bottom of the jacket, yanking the fabric in an attempt to pull her off balance, but she simply let it go. She knew the drives weren't in it. He threw it at her face, using it to mask his movement, and grabbed the pistol from the back of his waistband. She'd anticipated, and a spinning kick knocked the gun aside, leaving his right wrist suddenly numb and tingling.

Rather than try to recover it, he moved in, landing a backhand that almost sent her to the floor. She came back up with a small black knife, and he evaded the quick jab. She slashed at his face, and he blocked her return strike with his still-tingling right wrist, grabbing her right elbow and spinning her.

He pinned her to his chest, her own knife at her throat, and she drove them back into the wall. He grunted but didn't let her go, and a hanging picture whacked him in the head as it tumbled off the wall. She started to go for his instep and he angled the knife warningly. His wrist was pins and needles, but it held, and they both took a second to catch their breath.

"Have to say . . . they train you Delta boys up right," she murmured, and he didn't loosen his hold for a second.

"What do you want, huh?" When she gave a breathy laugh, he gave her a firm shake. "A trained monkey coulda done that job. You came to me –"

"Oh, don't sell yourself short, Jack. You know how small the world is." She relaxed a little in his arms. He didn't reciprocate. "Men like you, your background . . . you gave everything to your country, and when you needed them, what happened?"

He growled, low in his throat. "You think I'll turn, you didn't do your homework-"

"Turn on who?" Her voice was a little sharper. "Turn on your country? Screw those politicians, they used you. Turn on DXS? There's nothing to turn. You're damaged goods, you went off the reservation when -"

Jack tightened his hold on the knife in silent warning, and oddly, she started to laugh.

"Boy scout's gone, Dalton. You don't owe anyone anything. It's time to think about what's best for you."

Her left hand, which was hanging onto his right arm in an attempt to control the knife, slipped to his wrist, and it went completely numb. He shoved her away from him to avoid being gutted, and she spun gracefully. He heard a thud as something settled into the plaster beside his right ear.

He knew she'd put it exactly where she meant to, but it was still a stupid move.

Jack didn't immediately go for it, which she seemed to have expected. If he had, his left arm would have been crossed over his chest, and she would have been successful at pinning him against the wall. Instead he turned the tables, rolling them both away from the knife, and she found herself in the hold she'd tried to put him in.

Their faces were nearly touching, and he didn't miss the look of pleasure that flashed across her eyes, the quick breath. She'd somehow managed to get a knee between his, but she didn't take advantage. Nor did she go after his right wrist. That hand was still obeying him, he could see his fingers wound tight in her hair, but he couldn't feel a damn thing.

"You need to start thinking about life after revenge, Jack," she advised him breathlessly, and then she nipped his jaw, hard enough to draw blood.

He shoved her harder into the wall; he could have broken her neck, he had the angle, and her eyes grew darker. That knee between his slid up, applying _almost_ too much pressure, and he glared at her, breathing hard. That little smile, a tiny bit of blood on her lips –

 _It's not Sarah. She's not Sarah._

She shifted against him, in just the right way, and control, worn paper thin by the last couple weeks, finally snapped.

He was not gentle.

-M-

See Author's Notes in the final chapter.


	3. Chapter 3

Standard disclaimers apply. I don't own any of these characters, please don't sue.

-M-

It was several hours later when the bathroom counter started rattling.

Jack finished toweling off his face, glancing down. The burner was fairly simple, no custom ringtones or contact list, but the call had been forwarded from his personal cell, and he'd know that number anywhere.

He sighed, then looked at the guy in the mirror. "Dalton . . . what the fuck are you doin', man?"

That guy didn't look like he had any answers, either, and Jack picked up the phone and clicked the red disconnect button.

 _Sorry, Riley._

He grabbed clean clothes from his bag, rather than the slacks and oxford shirts in the closet – and he was sure they'd fit him like they were made for him, since apparently they had been – and dressed quickly. Not Sarah should have figured out by now that he'd swapped the used flash drives for the blank ones he'd been given at the beginning of the job.

He was still in possession of the intelligence they'd stolen from the embassy.

Unfortunately, without the help of a certain hacker, he hadn't made heads or tails of what it actually was. Most of it asked him for a password or the laptop couldn't figure out what the file type was, whatever the hell _that_ meant. Whatever it was, it had been worth spending a pretty penny on a plush hotel and wardrobe.

And he still had no idea who wanted it. Or, more to the point, who wanted _him_.

With no other excuse to stall, Jack yanked the towel over his short hair one more time, then tossed it on the floor, opening the bathroom door cautiously.

No sign of Not Sarah.

He slung his packed duffel onto the bed, and scowled at the picture of the coastline in its frame, still propped haphazardly against the wall. If they could spend the dineros to get the suite, they could pay to have someone pick up the mess. He'd already checked his bag and things for any uninvited guests – and found none, a point in their favor for once – and once he was sure he had his own shit collected, he shouldered the bag.

And tucked the pistol into his waistband. It was kind of like the mint on the pillow. He just assumed it was his to keep.

Jack intentionally left the keycard on the otherwise empty foyer table, glaring at the mirror above it, which was still crooked, and he headed out into the hall, never happier to leave a hotel room behind.

Though he had to say, the nearly private elevator was kinda nice.

It wasn't hard to find the hotel bar, and Not Sarah had dressed down as well, back into designer jeans and a burgundy blouse that brought out the reds in her hair. She was studying a glass of red wine, and a snifter, containing about a finger of deep brown liquor, sat in front of the chair across from her.

There were plenty of people in the bar. He mentally tagged the three he felt were mostly likely with her, and then he took his assigned seat, slinging the duffel into one of the two empty chairs.

"Leaving so soon?" she murmured, with a knowing smile.

"That's how it works, isn't it? Do a gig, get paid?" he shot back, parroting her words.

Her smile stretched a little closer to her eyes. "You got it, cowboy." She reached towards the small of her back, and he adjusted his position, but she came back with nothing more threatening than a thick yellow envelope, folded twice.

"This is what we've managed to get so far." She slipped it onto the table, equidistant between them. "And I believe you have something for our client?"

He sighed lightly. "Yeah. Any idea when he's gonna show?"

She cast a languid look around the room. "He's around."

Or course he was.

Jack bit back another sigh, pulling the flash drives out of his pocket. Moment of truth.

None of the guys he'd tagged moved, nor did Not Sarah. She waited patiently, taking a sip of her wine as he placed them on the opposite side of the white carnations that made up the centerpiece of the table.

If the sip of wine was a signal, he didn't pick up the result. There was no retaliation as he scooped up the envelope, and even after he had, she didn't immediately take ownership of the drives. Jack unfolded the envelope and pulled the stack of papers out about a quarter of the way, glancing at the first page.

"Technology's not your thing, so we went old school with the hard copies," Not Sarah informed him, slightly more business-like. "We've got a few more feelers out, but that should give you a good starting point."

The first page was what looked an awful lot like a CIA dossier on a fine arts broker. Jack pulled the stack completely free of the envelope, glancing at the first page and last known location. The next few pages were additional details on the broker, including his last decade or so of activity. He recognized the font as the default the Phoenix used.

Naturally, the CIA and Phoenix watermarks had been removed.

"Looks like you're headed to east Asia," she continued, setting down her wineglass and collecting the drives. "Turns out, my next assignment's on the way. Don't suppose you'd care to come along?"

He could tell at a glance that the intel was at least a week old, and sketchy at best. "Where's the rest of it?"

Not Sarah cocked her head. "The rest of what?"

Jack dropped the paper back to the table, almost upsetting his untouched glass of cognac. "My help for the man who killed my partner. That was the deal."

She was watching him steadily, now, as if she'd only just realized that she'd miscalculated. "I gave you what I have-"

Jack laughed humorlessly. "You are so full of shit." He hooked his arm around the back of the chair; his right wrist still didn't feel quite right, but it wasn't that swollen, and it still worked well enough to shoot. "If I wanted table scraps, I'd've stayed in LA. Now you're gonna get up, nice and slow, and you and me are gonna take a little ride, unless you wanna find out whether this pistol's loaded with real bullets."

"Well that escalated quickly," a softly accented voice noted sourly, and a lanky Indian man in his early thirties pulled out the unoccupied fourth seat.

Jack eyed him, but most of his attention was on the three heavies, all of whom seemed to be fairly interested in him.

"Who the hell are you?" Jack thought he sounded pretty polite, considering.

The Indian glanced at Not Sarah. ". . . tech support."

She rolled her eyes and picked up her wineglass. The heavies stayed put, and Jack didn't shift his position. It was a trendy hotel, and Jack recognized at least two of the bar patrons from the party at the embassy earlier. Not Sarah's people wouldn't want a scene any more than he did.

Tech Support focused back on Jack. "The man you're looking for is Alexandre Masson. He has a little chateau in Bordeaux country. He'll be there another three days handling a sale. Military hardware, nothing too major."

Jack gave Tech Support a long look. "Never heard of him."

Tech Support settled slightly deeper into his chair, apparently reassured that Jack was still willing to talk. "He's heard of you. And he wasn't too pleased when his diamonds were contaminated after your organization's top agent set off a small thermonuclear device in a casino vault in Azerbaijan."

Jack took that in without changing his expression. Mac, top agent?

Yeah, he'd give it to him. _That's my boy._

Tech Support was watching him carefully. "We have schematics of the property, and a schedule of deliveries for the next seventy-two hours."

Jack stayed silent, letting Tech Support sweat for a while, and then he flicked his eyes to Not Sarah. "There. Was that so hard?"

She gave him a fond look. "No, but it's not nearly as much fun."

He couldn't help it. He laughed. "You know, for an organization that markets yourself as not fucking over and stringing people along, you sure do a lot of it."

"I assure you, Mr. Dalton, that was not our intention," Tech Support jumped in smoothly. "I apologize for the . . . interview process, but you must understand, a man of your skills –"

Jack gave him a sharp look, and he paused. "I only meant," he tried again, conciliatorily, "that you're very impressive, and our employer would be thrilled to have you on our payroll."

"Pay's a lot better than corporate," Not Sarah added. "Could pad your way to a very nice retirement."

"Of course, the information I shared with you is yours, whatever you decide." Tech Support gestured for Jack to stay sitting, then stood and crossed back to his previous table. Jack tried to keep all the heavies in his peripheral vision, but they didn't move, and Tech Support returned with a worn and well-loved leather messenger bag.

"Payment for a job well done." He didn't seem to notice that digging around in the bag wasn't the best plan when sitting within arm's reach of a wary Jack Dalton, and he came back up holding a fat file.

He offered it to Jack, his expression earnest.

Jack stared at the file for a long moment, and then he straightened, removing his right arm from the back of the chair to accept the folder. He flipped through it quickly; Tech Support was telling the truth. Architectural diagrams, delivery schedules and companies, known associates, security details.

The watermarks hadn't been removed from these copies. CIA, NSA, DHS –

And the Phoenix Foundation. Dated two days ago.

Jill had had access to this when he'd texted her.

Jack closed the folder.

"At least tell me you'll think about it." Not Sarah's voice was just not Sarah's enough to set his teeth on edge.

"It's like you said." He tapped the folder on the table, settling the papers. "Uncle Sam used us. So'd the Company, and Phoenix too. Think I've had my fill." He stood, not too quickly, and shoved the folder into the side pocket of his duffel bag.

And then he left.

-M-

Matty's face was set in stone. "What about this one?"

Riley toggled to the next employee profile. Lisa Burgess. She was a rather plump woman in her late forties, and wasn't someone Riley had even seen in the halls in passing. Finance lived up on five, and she was almost never there.

The director studied it a moment. "Accounting," she said finally. "Hired three years ago. What's her deal?"

Riley pulled up a few VISA statements. "We didn't see any red flags at first. No weird patterns, no dropping off the grid, no unexplained deposits or purchases."

Matty glanced over the statements. " . . . then why are we looking at her?"

Riley highlighted line items on the statements. "Every two weeks on Tuesday, she makes the same three purchases." The first was a pharmacy, second was fast food, and the third was at Doggie Daze, a boutique pet food and supply store. It happened to be three storefronts down from Ricarnello's.

Matty eyed the information. "You think it's a dead drop?"

Riley nodded. "Now look two Tuesdays ago."

The night Mac had been killed.

"Same three purchases, same basic amounts." And the timestamp at Doggie Daze put her there right around the time Mac and Bozer were eating dinner.

"So she went to her dead drop at her scheduled time."

"Yes." Riley then pulled up the cell tower records. "But Jill and I checked to see if any other Phoenix employees were anywhere near Ricarnello's at the time of the attack. Look whose phone didn't show up." In fact, she'd turned it off as soon as she'd left the Phoenix parking lot.

Matty looked confused. "But she left a paper trail."

Riley glanced back at the woman's picture. "Yeah. It looks like she always turns off her phone, every other Tuesday, even though she turns around and uses a credit card." That was the one part of the whole thing that rubbed Riley the wrong way. How could an agent be that smart, and that stupid?

Then again, Lisa Burgess wasn't an agent, and she didn't have agent training. She was just an accountant. Who had access to the intimate details of every op where the Phoenix Foundation or any one of its hundreds of shell companies had to pay for something.

Which was every one.

"Is that all?"

Riley shook her head. "About a minute after Mac and Bozer pulled up at Ricarnello's, someone at Doggie Daze placed a call on their landline. It went to a burner phone, and that phone's not been active since I've been searching."

"Can you tie it back to the assassins?"

Riley shook her head. "No. But it could explain why we never found a tracker. Ricarnello's is like, ten minutes from their place, tops. If the hitmen had been thinking Mac was going straight home . . ."

Then they could have been rerouted to Ricarnello's. The timetable fit.

Matty's walls were frosted, which typically meant that no one was supposed to enter, but the door behind them hissed, and Riley quickly killed everything she'd had up on the screen. Matty turned as well, ready to rip that idiot a new asshole, and Riley turned casually to –

To see Jill standing in the doorway. She looked extremely apologetic. "I'm so sorry to interrupt, Director, but you said if we saw any activity, to let you know –"

Matty simply nodded, and turned to Riley. "Would you excuse us for a minute?"

Riley nodded, standing and grabbing her rig, and Jill flashed her a tight smile as they passed one another. Riley fished a pair of earbuds out of her pocket, making sure the door closed behind her before popping one of the buds in. She toggled over a Linux command prompt, and launched an application she used to make her rig more seamlessly connect to the war room systems.

And connect it did, without any notification to the system or anyone using it.

She just wanted to make sure it wasn't about Jack. Once he left his phone in his apartment, she'd had a hard time tracking him down. She'd caught him in the lobby of a swanky hotel with what had looked like Sarah, but if he was working a job for the CIA, Matty would know about it-

"-is live," she heard Jill's voice loud and clear.

Riley ducked into an unused conference room, taking a seat and toggling over to what was being displayed on Matty's big screen. Unfortunately, it was quite a bit smaller on her laptop, and Riley squinted, trying to make it out.

It looked like a satellite view of a house, or maybe a small museum. It was set to infrared, she could see red and orange dots moving around a blue-green outline. Most of the dots towards the bottom of the screen were stationary, but the ones nearer to the top were still active.

"What about our agents on the ground?" Matty's voice was clipped.

"They're not responding to radio, and they haven't moved." Riley didn't like the concern in Jill's tone.

It was an op, clearly, but not one she was on, and Riley was about to tune out when Matty stopped her cold.

"And we're sure it's Jack?"

The satellite view zoomed further out, shrinking the image even smaller, and Riley could barely make out an orange dot at the very bottom of the screen, moving towards all the other dots that weren't.

"I see."

Riley stared at that tiny little orange dot, watching it move beyond the line of still dots, then pause. One of the dots towards the upper right corner of the screen stopped moving. Two of the others, who had been in the same section of the house, however, started moving much faster.

Jill zoomed them back in, and the dots started actually looking like people. The attacking dot breached the back of the . . . mansion, Riley decided, not bothering to reference the GPS coordinates at the top of the screen, and engaged in a gunfight with two others. They both went down quickly.

She watched that figure move systematically through the house, dropping everyone in his path. When he got to the last other occupant, she saw him raise a gun, gesturing to the other. That person seemed to move around something – furniture, she guessed – with their hands clearly raised in front of them. Then the figure flinched, twice, and fell. The attacking figure approached, until he was almost on top of the other, and then –

Riley leaned away from the laptop.

In her ear, she finally heard someone speak.

"Keep eyes on him if you can. I want to know where he goes. Any word on our agents?"

Riley heard a few keystrokes. "Backup's still five minutes out."

"Shit. He'll be long gone."

The screen popped back out to a less zoomed view, and Riley brought up another window, and typed in the GPS coordinates at the top of Jill's feed.

France. Grape country. It was a chateau and winery, only the company info was showing up. She'd have to dig to find out more.

"I want full communication logs for every agent on that op. Find out how Jack knew where to go."

"Yes ma'am."

Riley kept her eye on the orange dot as it cleared the property line and hopped into a vehicle, that was only slightly warmer than the ambient air. It started, but only the exhaust was hot enough to track for the time being. Their software should do a good job of keeping tabs on that vehicle, but Jack would know that.

Riley grabbed a map of the region and started looking for roads with tunnels.

On satellite, a car pulled up to the south side, where two dots sat unmoving in what looked like a vehicle.

"Patch me into coms."

The loud pop of radio exploded in her earbud. It was way louder to her than in the room, and Riley winced and held the earbud an inch from her head, where it was still plenty loud.

"-on site now."

She heard hurried footsteps and breathing. Then a car door opened. On the screen, it was happening slightly faster, audio was always a little delayed. Both doors were open, and the third shape was covering the others.

"Got rounds in the vest-"

"Me too."

"Got a pulse."

"They're alive." A brief pause. "Vests took all the rounds. We'll need medical."

Riley watched the feed a moment longer, then closed the window. She left the audio connection open, turning down the volume and putting the earbud back in, and carried her rig out of the conference room. Riley nodded to people in the hallway, ducking into the break room, and she got herself a soda and sat at one of the tables like she hadn't just watched Jack single-handedly take out twelve people.

After he incapacitated fellow Phoenix agents. By shooting them.

"Will they make it to exfil?"

A brief pause. "Yeah, but they won't be happy when they wake up."

Maty barely waited for their transmission to finish. "Pull out. No cleanup. We'll move up exfil."

"Copy."

Riley glanced at her map of France, finding two roads with tunnels within five miles of the chateau. If Jack was smart, he'd lose them right there.

She never heard Matty request it, but Jill spoke up. "Coms are muted. I've moved up their exfil to 1600 hours."

"Good. Make this disappear."

" . . . director?"

"All of it. We weren't there, and we have no idea what happened."

Riley slurped at her soda as one of the other analysts walked in and waved.

"What about Dalton?"

Riley gave the other analyst a nod, toggling off her map of France, just in case there was a reflection in the glass behind her.

"What about him." Matty's voice was flat. "Jack Dalton no longer works for the Phoenix Foundation. I got his letter of resignation two days ago. If he gets caught, it's on him."

" . . . are we . . . pursuing him?"

Riley stared blankly at her monitor, just listening.

"For this? No. Alexandre Masson took the best pair of agents I've ever known, and he deserved far worse than he just got. Just . . . keep an eye on Dalton. Nothing official. I want to know where to look when I'm ready to find him."

". . . yes, director."

-M-

Jack Dalton shook his head, staring at a café he had no intention of ever visiting again, and from one of the streetside tables, Not Sarah gave him a cheerful wave. She'd embraced the Parisian style, in a tailored black fall trench and matte leather boots. Same impossible stiletto heel.

He pulled out a chair, straddling it backwards just like he had the last time he'd visited this particular café, and on a whim, he picked up the bottle of wine. It was another Chateau de Unpronounceable, he couldn't be sure if it was the same label or not.

She'd certainly done her fucking homework, he'd give her that.

"I really hate you," he said quietly.

She smiled brightly. "Only way to get over the hump, cowboy. Feel any better since you put his killers down?"

Jack sighed softly, eyes on the traffic. "Want me to put you down?"

Not Sarah laughed, sounding sincerely amused. "Relax, Jack. I'm sure the boy scout appreciated the sentiment, if not the execution. It's always been your nature. And trust me, I'm not judging."

He carefully schooled his expression into a pleasant one as a middle-aged server came and offered him a wineglass. He nodded, letting the man set it on the table and pour, and Not Sarah sent him a playful look once the waiter was gone.

"One more word about Mac and I'll end you," he growled, before she could say anything else. "Now tell me what I'm doin' here."

"Making a lot of money." She passed him a tourist's map of Paris, which he accepted. As he unfolded it, architectural plans for a large house came into view. He folded the map casually, keeping the plans hidden from pedestrians, and gave it a once over.

"Pen test for a potential customer."

A penetration test. Seeing if they could evade or defeat defenses and breach the perimeter.

"Capture the flag?"

She made an amused sound. "Not exactly. It's unscheduled, and the customer's security will be using live rounds. That's . . . not a problem, is it?"

Jack glanced at her over the map. "Are we supposed to avoid casualties?" Because given the entry points, that was going to be a bit of challenge –

She shrugged, and took a sip of her wine. "Our prerogative."

Jack took a moment to wonder if this potential customer knew he was thinking about hiring them, or if that was going to be a surprise as well. "Do we have a timetable?"

"Tonight." Her gaze drifted over his shoulder and sharpened, and Jack cocked an ear towards a street bike. She didn't move, and it turned before it hit their block. She refocused on him with a wicked little smile.

"This time I brought toys."

-M-

Less than twenty-four hours after he landed in Paris, Jack found himself staring up at a nondescript business plaza somewhere in London.

Not Sarah killed the engine. "Welcome to the Office, where you'll never have to file an action report."

"Really." He gave the place a closer look. Nondescript cams, but all mounted in the right places. The window glass looked a little thick, probably bullet resistant. It wasn't a perfect rectangle, there were alcoves to provide cover. Landscaping was ordinary but tidy. The cars parked along the block were all white collar.

At the corner bus stop, a sturdy African gentleman was negotiating price with an obviously strung out customer.

"What's the word they use here in Limeyland? _Charming_."

She followed his gaze, then got out and locked the doors. "We own every dealer for miles. In this part of the city, the lack of a certain . . . population would be a red flag. We maintain just enough activity to stay under the local radar."

Opioids. Not just for Americans.

Jack walked around the car, following Not Sarah towards a perfectly ordinary set of double doors, and was presented with a lobby not unlike the Phoenix's. If it had a quarter of the budget and had been built in the late 1940s. Old marble on the floors and walls, polished and in reasonably good shape. Very square furniture. Kind of a cross between a law office and a hospital waiting room.

But the security was visible just beneath. High tech cameras. The doorframe he'd walked through was a little too wide, telling him it had detection capabilities beyond just metal. The receptionist was well placed to take out anyone in the room. And it opened up into the second story, allowing for a balcony and for the folks on the second story to have bullet resistant positions should the lobby be overrun.

Not Sarah nodded to the pretty blonde receptionist, who Jack noted did _not_ have screwed up teeth like every episode of Doctor Who had led him to believe, and preceded him through a set of double doors to the right.

They went up a flight of stairs, then crossed the balcony he'd seen from the lobby. With the advantage of height, Jack could see that the receptionist was well armed.

"Hope no one's ever pressured _her_ for her number," he muttered, momentarily forgetting that Mac was in fact not beside him, and Not Sarah probably wouldn't see the humor.

If she'd heard him, she didn't say anything about it, and he was led to conference room, with windows on the street below. The glass was definitely bullet resistant. At the head of the richly stained cherry table were a stack of green folders, and a tiny little Turkish coffee cup.

"Don't blow it, cowboy," Not Sarah murmured, and Jack tensed, but all she did was turn around and walk out, leaving him alone in the large room.

Jack wandered over to the table, brushing his fingertips across it. Slightly warmer than room temperature. A glance at the floor showed no plugs, but the framing around the edge of the table seemed to indicate places it could be pulled out, like drawers. The ceiling tiles were acoustic, any one of them could be a drop down projector, and there was an obvious rectangle across the ceiling of the shortest wall that likely hid the projector screen.

"What do you think?"

Jack turned, and at the other door – which opened silently, he noted belatedly – stood an unremarkable woman, he'd guess somewhere in her mid thirties. She had piercing blue eyes, darker than Mac's, and hair so brown it was nearly black. She was neither fat nor fit, that comfortable middle ground that so many Brits tended to be, and even wearing flats she was nearly six feet tall.

She took the head of the table, indicating a chair beside her, and Jack approached, but didn't sit. She gave him a quick grin that seemed sincere, and then glanced down at what he presumed was a dossier.

"Jack Wyatt Dalton. Born in '75 – good, you got to experience the eighties. Army, Delta division, sniper. Moved on to the CIA, and from there to DXS. You're just chock full of experience, aren't you." Her accent was one hundred percent American.

"You do the job, you get paid. No strings, no contracts, no mind games. This will differ a little from your previous experience, in that no one has your back. If you fuck up, it's your problem. Try not to fuck up," she advised, flicking a piece of paper over without looking at him.

He'd give her one thing – the honest was refreshing.

"The position we're currently filling is a consultant. You'll be interfacing directly with our clients. Most of our customers are looking for assistance with evasion of intelligence organizations, which is where you'll use your knowledge of current CIA and DXS capabilities and protocols to help them secure their enterprises. Your spec ops experience may come in handy for customer transport, but I think I'd rather keep you here in Europe and Asia for now."

No trip to the sandbox. He could honestly say he wasn't disappointed.

She flipped through another couple pages, but didn't seem to see anything worth commenting on. After about thirty seconds of silence, she glanced up at him. "Any questions so far?"

He gave her a broad Jack Dalton grin. "Nah. I already got this spiel. It was the same pile of bunk then."

The woman raised an eyebrow. "Which part?"

Jack thumbed over his shoulder. "Doin' up your girl to look like my old CIA partner, that was a nice touch. And walkin' her in with every detail I'd need to take out the guys that murdered my Phoenix partner, that was just icin' on the cake. Makes a guy wonder if you didn't organize the hit on ol' Alex's behalf and then serve 'im up to me on a platter as a signing bonus."

The woman stared at him, then leaned back in her chair, seemingly completely relaxed despite obviously knowing what he was capable of. "Why would you think I'd do that?"

At least she admitted it. Kind of. "Because the Phoenix hasn't been around all that long, and you're desperate to get hold of someone who'll turn on her."

She gave that some thought. "You're not wrong," she acknowledged. "Retired DXS agents are hard to come by. Most of you tend to get killed."

He let his eyes go hard and flat, and she held up a hand. "We had nothing to do with your partner. Looks like he tagged along for almost half of your professional career. That must be painful. I'm sorry for your loss, sincerely."

In his experience, if you were sincere you didn't need to spell it out. "While we're on the topic, in two years when my knowledge is out of date, what's your retirement plan like? Bullet to the head, or the back? Need to know if I should plan for an open casket."

She smiled in honest amusement. "You're quite right, your inside intelligence has a shelf life. Typically it's between two to three years. Once you hit that threshold, we promote you to recruiter."

The woman gestured out to the hall. "The agent you know as Catherine is one such recruiter. I hand picked her for you – and yes, I didn't miss the resemblance. I knew she'd get your attention. Sue me."

"Kinda hard to do that when I don't know your name."

She smiled, a self deprecating one that seemed far too down to earth for the type of organization she was purporting to run, and then she stood, and offered her right hand. "Eve."

How Biblical. He looked at her hand. "What, no apple?"

"Yeah, my dad thinks he's hilarious."

Almost despite himself, Jack laughed, and then he took her outstretched hand. Her handshake was firm, but in the corporate kind of way, not in the military kind of way. She was standing flat-footed, showed no signs of situational awareness . . . it was like he was talking to some kind of corporate auditor.

"You're what, head of HR?"

Now it was her turn to laugh. "Yeah, I know, not a badass. Everyone in this building can kill me." She didn't seem remotely ashamed by the admission. "Kind of fell into the business from a side hobby."

Jack blinked, and tried to envision a side hobby that would lead to an assassin and anti-intelligence organization. ". . . got tired of doing people's taxes?"

She laughed again. "Uh, no. But you're not too far off." She turned back to the table, picking up a stack of folders. "Here's our currently unpaired associates. You're welcome to choose a partner, or at least take one for a test drive. Or not. If it's too soon, don't worry about it. We haven't exactly advertised you, but I imagine word's getting around."

Jack accepted the stack, flipping open the first file. Hispanic dude, NSA. Younger than he would have expected. Second folder was a woman with eyebrows so thick that probably had their own dental plan. Mossad.

Israelis. All the stereotypes were true.

"Equal opportunity recruitment, eh?"

She shrugged, picking up his dossier and her pen. Even that was a normal Bic gel pen, nothing fancy. She was just . . . unexpectedly normal. It unsettled him.

"Ish. I'm only as good as my recruiters. And that's not to say that once you're promoted to recruiting, it's the end of life in the field. A sniper of your caliber has at least another fifteen good years left in you. If that's your jam, who am I to say no."

Jack held up the stack of resumes. "This everyone?"

"Everyone unpaired and open to partners." She glanced at the stack. "Like I said, I'm sorry for your loss. If you don't want to be paired, it's your ass, and your choice."

Jack nodded slowly, looking down at the stack of folders. Then he discarded them on the table.

"I don't want or need another partner." He couldn't suppress a fond grin. "Already got me the best one there is."

Eve stared at him a moment, clearly not following, and Jack chuckled to himself. "It pains me a little bit to say it, but you're under arrest."

He knew they'd spotted metal on him when he'd come through their fancy detector, but he figured they thought it was a sidearm – he sure as hell had one – and hadn't been looking for plastic. He fished the restraints out of the small of his back, and she looked at them, smile still on her face.

"You have to be kidding me," she told him, point blank. "There's no way you can't see that you were used. Your old partner is getting freezer burnt somewhere, and after what you've done you can't even show your face at his funeral without getting shot. Give me a break, Dalton. This is a dream job for you."

He wasn't sure if it was a good thing or a bad thing that he kinda agreed with her. "Hands behind your back," he prodded, approaching her, and Eve gave him a look that held every bit of disappointment his gramma's would have if he'd just tracked mud across the kitchen.

He was keyed now to how softly the doors opened, and though Eve didn't give it away, he leapt towards the head of the table, hoping beyond hope it wasn't just drawers hidden in the damn thing and it would give him a little protection.

Someone got off two shots, but he didn't feel any impacts, and he rolled for better cover, pulling his pistol. Eve had made a run for the other door and he let her. He just couldn't bring himself to shoot her; it was way too much like tagging a civilian.

Instead, he rolled under the table, and shot a pair of stiletto heels in the right ankle. Not Sarah came down, gun aimed right at him, and he hit her between the eyes.

Even in death, she managed to maintain eye contact, which was _totally_ something Sarah would do, and Jack shook it off and headed out the same door Eve had taken.

The Phoenix tac team had partial control of the second floor, and he went for the closest set of doors. It was an office, currently unoccupied, with connecting doors to the offices on either side.

Great.

In his experience, in corporate America bosses tended to have corner offices, and so he headed to the door on his right, moving his way down the side of the building. Each office he came to looked remarkably similar – same furniture, same setup. A few kitschy little knick-knacks seemed to differ, but that was it, and Jack was starting to get a little creeped out by the time he made it to the last one.

That office wasn't empty.

Eve was at her computer, typing furiously, and she didn't even glance up as he threw open the door. The gun didn't seem to faze her, so he shot the monitor.

She flinched back, obviously surprised, and then glanced at the flatpanel. ". . . you really don't like computers, do you."

Her left hand was straying towards one of the desk drawers, and he tutted. "Come out, nice and easy."

Eve sighed. "I don't suppose we can talk about this?"

Jack gestured with the pistol, and she raised her hands half-heartedly and stood. Jack nudged the door behind him closed and approached. "Well, yeah, talking's encouraged, actually."

She gave him a dirty look. "Not what I meant."

"I know what you meant." Cage was gonna love this chick.

She came out from around the desk, but his zip ties were still lying on the floor in the conference room, so he grabbed her by her suit jacket and shoved her towards the door leading to the hallway. "C'mon, let's go."

They crossed the office towards the door, and Jack could clearly hear the scuffle outside. There'd been a few gunshots, but not many, and he knew his team would have suppressors, so he was gonna count that as a win. Eve paused to grab the doorknob, and he came up behind her and put a hand on her shoulder.

"Easy now." No point in having her step out only to get popped -

She dropped out from beneath his hand. Training was instinct, and he fired without thinking, but her back and head were no longer where his pistol was, and she knocked his right arm aside almost at the same instant.

She popped back up between his arms and hit him square in the throat. Jack gagged and staggered back, barely managing to block a right cross and actually falling out of the way of a knee to the groin. He raised the gun but she kicked it out of the way, somehow she had her own and Jack would have winced in anticipation if he hadn't been so damn concerned with breathing.

The gun went off, he heard it clear as day, but she was no longer in his line of sight, and Jack gagged again, not sure if he was hit. He couldn't swallow, couldn't get a breath in or out, like someone had stuffed a sock down his throat. His searching hand didn't find a giant dent, which he kind of expected, given the way it felt, and then there was pressure on his chest, and someone was trying to pull his hand away.

Jack fought, at some point he'd dropped the gun but he wasn't very well going to let her strangle him, and dark hair and a pale face swam into view.

Male.

Not Eve.

Jack felt himself heave, and the guy shoved his head back onto the carpet. Jack's chin was forcibly tipped up, and he managed the tiniest inhale.

"-on't puke, Jack, please don't puke-"

Dark edged across the white ceiling, like the goo from that flatpanel, and Jack blinked furiously, and managed to squirt a little air past the thing in his throat. It made him gag.

Suffocating was not the way he wanted to go.

"-ome on, big guy, breathe-"

Jack sucked in another sip of air, it almost felt like water on the back of his burning throat.

The dark was winning.

He jerked in surprise when he realized there was something on his face, but the reflex felt majorly delayed, like whatever it was had been there for a while. He was still on his back, his arms were pinned and his head was tilted back as far as it would go, and there was something covering his mouth and nose.

Jack tried to shake off both the hands and the thing on his face, completely unable to do either, and he managed to suck down the world's thinnest thread of air. Out was just as hard. It was like breathing through a coffee stirrer after just finishing a marathon.

Useless.

But he kept at it, listening to a pained, high pitched whistle he was pretty sure was coming from his own throat.

There was some kind of commotion, noises and voices. The hold on him remained steady, and while the sensation of suffocating still gripped his chest, little by little, his vision started to clear.

Staring down at him was a dirty face, young but gaunt, spotted with pimples and sores. His dark hair was short and shaggy, and his nose was hawkish. None of that mattered. His eyes were a crystal blue, and Jack would know them anywhere.

The kid's cracked lips pulled up in a grin. "I got you, partner. You're gonna be fine. Just breathe."

-M-

See Author's Notes in the final chapter.


	4. Chapter 4

Standard disclaimers apply. I don't own any of these characters, please don't sue.

-M-

The door hissed open, and Mac didn't miss the way his partner tensed.

But it was Jill's face that poked in. "Director?"

Matty made a come hither motion, and the analyst stepped in. She gave Jack a bright smile, though Mac knew she was aware she was not the person he was hoping to see. He gave her a nod, and she picked a seat closer to the monitor, on the side Riley didn't prefer.

It put her beside Cage, who was still studying Jack like she'd never actually seen him before.

"You know, I feel like I should be offended on his behalf," Mac continued their interrupted conversation. "You knew he was with the CIA for years. What did you think they had him doing? Paperwork?"

Samantha held up her hands, palm out, in clear surrender. "I apologize, Jack, if you feel slighted. You . . . surprised me."

"That was kind of the point." But Matty didn't sound angry. She actually sounded rather proud.

". . . do you think one of us should go check on Boze?" Jack's voice was still hoarse from the blow he'd taken yesterday, but talking didn't seem to actually pain him anymore, and he made a half-hearted gesture at the door. "Seriously, she might've killed him-"

"Oh – Bozer and Riley?" Jill glanced back at the door. "They were behind me, they should be right in."

The glass of Matty's office was frosted, not because what they were saying was classified – well, it was, still – but to keep the gawkers to a minimum. It wasn't every day an agent was shot in the street, kept in a medically induced coma for another two weeks, and then was miraculously walking around, completely recovered. Matty had promised to send out a memo at the end of the day, but before she did, she wanted to complete a group debrief.

It wasn't unheard of, and considering the way they'd had to run this op, Mac had pretty much insisted on it. Cage was taking it pretty well, but Riley –

Right on cue, the door opened, and Bozer's voice floated in. "-t's not that-"

Jack was sitting on the back of the furthest couch, eyes on the door, and was the first person she saw. Given Bozer's tone of voice, Mac figured she was furious, but Riley looked remarkably normal as she walked in, laptop in hand. She glanced at the room, then pulled her phone out of her pocket.

"Am I late?"

"You're right on time," Matty assured her, and Riley gave her a strange look and took her usual spot on the sofa. Mac watched her, and she looked up at the main screen, and thus at him by default.

She met his eyes squarely, and gave him a nod of acknowledgement. Like it was any other day.

Well okay then.

Mac turned back to Matty, pulling a paperclip out of his pocket. "Where do you want to start?"

"The beginning. Where else."

He inclined his head. "Well, then, take us away."

"Thank you," Matty said, her voice sarcastically chipper. "Okay. People, jump in as needed. Over the last four years, the CIA became aware of several of their retired agents disappearing. No phones, no contact with loved ones, just gone. Never a good sign. Around the same time, criminal organizations that had been under scrutiny for years suddenly seemed to wise up to surveillance techniques."

"So agents were going missing, and the bad guys were getting smarter." Cage looked thoughtful. "I think I remember something about this, wasn't there an op . . . ?"

"There was. Several, in fact, run by most of the major intelligence agencies in the world. ISI, MI6, GRU, ASIS. The CIA ran a joint venture with Mossad, and that's when we started to realize that everyone was noticing the same trend. About six months ago, the American agencies got together and decided to pool resources. Each organization picked an agent they thought would be attractive." Matty's voice went sour.

"For some reason, Jack Dalton bubbled up to the top of our list."

Jack, for his part, perked up, and pointed at his face. "C'mon, look at this handsome mug. Was there ever any doubt?"

Matty glared at him. "Despite my misgivings, our colleagues at the CIA came up with a plan."

"Bump Mac off and send Jack over the edge," Bozer summarized glibly.

Mac turned and gave his roommate a look. "Well, gee, when you put it like that –"

"Hey, man, you know I love you more than a brother, but that's basically what it was."

Samantha was not so easily distracted. "So this has been in planning –"

"For months," Matty confirmed. "The op was compartmentalized. The only ones who knew about it on our side were me, Jack, Mac, Bozer, and Jill."

"You needed Bozer to fake Mac's death." It was Riley, and Mac turned to find her finally actually looking at him. He nodded, but it was Boze who replied.

"Yeah. My boy's died a hundred deaths over the years for my films, but I gotta say, this was the only one that actually scared me a li'l bit." Bozer ran a palm over his hair. "He'd been wearing the blood packs in his jacket for a while, so they were warm. That was more than a little creepy. I put radio packs on his shirt and the window at Ricarnello's. Mac had the remote in his pocket."

Jill held up a hand. ". . . so what, the restaurant had no idea?"

Mac shook his head. "No. We paid for the repairs by telling them the neighborhood had taken up a collection to replace the glass."

The analyst nodded. "I have to say, I watched those videos a lot, and it looked pretty convincing. How did you keep your eyes open so long?"

Bozer smirked and answered for him. "Numbing drops. Same thing your optometrist uses during your eye exam. Stops the need to blink."

"I wouldn't go that far," Mac amended, "but they certainly helped."

"Yeah. It was some of our best work. But you still jumped the gun. Pardon the pun," Bozer added quickly, with a glance at Jack. "You moved before Sarah'd even finished pulling her piece."

"Sarah?" Riley's voice was almost sharp with surprise.

The director nodded. "This was a joint operation with the CIA. Sarah Adler and her partner were part of the team on their end. We needed the hitmen to be as convincing as Mac and Bozer. It was the CIA's house in Phoenix we raided, and most of their agents made up that tac team."

Cage just nodded, putting the details together in her head. "That's why you didn't let me try to unlock her phone. I'd realize the body wasn't real."

"Oh, no, that was a live agent," Jack rasped. "They did almost as good a job as Bozer."

Samantha gave him a piercing look. "And that rifle-"

"Blanks," he confirmed. "Didn't want you goin' all Crocodile Dundee on that group."

Matty held up a hand. "Let's not get ahead of ourselves. Bozer faked Mac's death, and we swapped Mac out for a dummy at the hospital."

"So those nurses were in on it?" Riley sounded ever so slightly stilted.

"Uh . . . not really." The lifecast cadaver Bozer had made of him was sure to haunt his dreams for years to come, and Mac made a mental note to make absolutely certain it was destroyed when the post-op was complete. "We told them it was a demo model from a medical dummy company, and we were there to film new training videos on handling the loss of a patient."

"Everything was on tape," Matty added. "Not just the hospital, but here at the Phoenix as well. We knew this organization had to be getting inside information from at least one of our intelligence agencies, and we needed the records. It had to look one hundred percent authentic." Matty glanced between Samantha and Riley. "Including everyone's reactions."

It wasn't an apology, but it was as close as they were going to get. Mac had been that guy before; the one who wasn't in on the plan, but still playing his part. He knew how much it sucked. "We needed you two to sell it."

Samantha nodded – it probably wasn't her first time in that role. Riley seemed content to listen silently; when she realized their attention was on her, she nodded too. "Yeah, I get it. I take it it worked?"

Matty gestured at the screen, and Jill brought up several video feeds. A glance told Mac they were stings; one was in an office, two in homes. "Not to skip to the end, but yes. We found leaks at the NSA and CIA." Each window showed an arrest.

"So . . . Lisa Burgess was you," Riley said slowly, staring at Jill. The other analyst looked at her blankly.

"Actually . . ."

Mac glanced back at Matty, who had pursed her lips.

"While I am certain Ms. Burgess had nothing to do with the staged hit on Mac, what you found was real, and doesn't leave this room."

Mac looked between the three of them. "Wait . . . there's a leak here at the Phoenix?"

Matty glared at him. "What did I just say?"

"Matty, they had a lot of our intel." It was particularly rough, and Jack cleared his throat. "Current intel."

"Yes. It appears that's all thanks to our friends at the NSA." Matty's tone made it clear what she thought about that. "Our external data release policies are being reviewed. However, unless there was anything else you found, Riley –"

The hacker shook her head. "No. Just . . . what you wanted me to find, I guess."

Jill gave her an apologetic look. "I'm sorry, Riley. I thought you'd caught me at least a dozen times –"

"Nah, you did pretty good." Riley's eyes were on her laptop. "That guy who posted the video out to the dark web, he was with us?"

Jill nodded. "Yeah. I did that, actually. I tried to tag it so you'd find it without too much searching . . ."

"And we're going to have a discussion about that at a later date," Matty interjected, glancing between the two of them. "Getting back on topic, once Blondie and Bozer were off the board, they started following up on leads. Selling Jack going off the deep end wasn't hard, that was basically SOP for you."

Jack made a face. "Yeah, whatever. I think I'm _still_ hung over from like, last Wednesday."

"Well, your country thanks you for sacrificing your liver for the greater good," Matty told him dryly. "We picked up their surveillance on Mac's hospital room and Jack's apartment two days after the hit. They took the bait after the cluster in Arizona."

Mac nodded. "Boze and I went to El Salvador as Jack's backup. Once he pulled off his audition in the embassy –"

"Wait. You were there?" Cage glanced between them.

"They were with Jack the entire time. You didn't really think I'd let Yosemite Sam out of my sight, did you?" Matty scoffed.

Mac smiled at Samantha. "I went in as wait staff at the embassy, to make sure Jack could circumvent security. I tended bar at the hotel for the drop, then I was a waiter _again_ in Paris -"

"Before I graduated you to junkie in London," Bozer finished. "Am I good, or am I good."

Samantha gave the younger man an appreciative stare. "Bozer . . . to have fooled an operative of Rivah's skill that many times-"

Rivah Koch was the name of the recruiter sent to Jack's apartment, and Mac wouldn't soon forget the way his stomach dropped when they'd finally identified her, and he'd realized who they'd just handed his partner over to, and exactly how dangerous she really was.

Bozer probably didn't truly understand why Cage was so impressed, and Mac gave his roommate a few seconds to bask.

"But how did you stay ahead of them?" Samantha turned her attention back to him. "Rivah should have been stringing Jack along . . ."

Mac gestured to the back of the room. "She was. Rivah put a bug on Jack for the embassy job. He gave it to me when I gave him the badge, and Jill tracked it to their base of operations in the hotel. While Jack kept everyone occupied during the drop, Bozer got into their room and got Jill access to a laptop."

"I used your toolkit to clone one of their email accounts," Jill added, again looking at Riley. Making sure she was aware that she'd contributed, even if they'd had to keep her in the dark. Mac sent the other analyst a silent thank you.

"So the entire thing with Masson . . ." Mac didn't miss the sharp look Matty sent the hacker, and neither did Riley.

"How did you know about that?"

Riley took a deep breath. ". . . yeah. I sort of knew something was up, and you'd asked me to look into everyone here at Phoenix, so . . ." She gave Jill a half apologetic look. "I might've been poking around on your rig."

Jill flashed her a quick smile. "You did a good job. I never noticed."

Mac didn't miss that Matty's attention didn't leave Riley, and he made a mental note to ask about that later. "We had to give Eve's operation something to offer Jack, so we created a backstory for my hit that they'd buy. They gave Jack the intel we planted, but we knew they'd never believe that he'd let it go, so –"

"So I creamed a dozen DGSI graduates." Jack smirked a little. "They thought it was part of a joint training exercise. Took it pretty well for a buncha frogs."

"And once Jack had his revenge, Rivah finally contacted Eve, the head of the organization, and we got their headquarters." The rest was pretty self-explanatory. "Jack bought us enough time to scope the place out, and Matty sent in the cavalry."

"And we cleaned house." She walked back to the screens, and touched them, bringing up a series of photographs. "Their entire leadership team is either dead or in custody. We've been able to identify most of the agent they've contracted, and tracking those people down is just a matter of time. The non-American agents have been delegated to their respective international agencies, which means we probably won't get much feedback on the results of their investigations, but this was a definite win, folks. We unraveled a massive anti-intelligence organization, and we got their list of clients to boot."

"Hey, I'll take it. We needed a win." Jack's voice still sounded like gravel.

"Yes we did," Mac agreed. "So what now?"

"Well, now Louis Armstrong back there needs to come back down to the real world and get his damn action reports in." Matty cast a significant look at the back of the room. "Jill and Riley, you'll be sifting through the data we managed to recover from Eve's servers and start marrying it up to known players and any current ops the US has ongoing. Cage, I'll be needing your help with that little issue we discussed earlier."

Matty turned and looked up at him. "As for you and Bozer . . . get that creepy ass dummy out of my cryo lab."

Mac inclined his head. "With pleasure."

He stuffed the paperclip, which had taken the shape of Snoopy's doghouse from Peanuts, into his back pocket.

-M-

Jack sighed, leaning back against the wooden bench and taking a deep pull of his beer.

"Tokyo," Bozer offered into the deepening twilight.

On his right, Mac was sprawled out, elbows on the deck floor behind him and one foot propped up on the actual firepit. "Tokyo's not bad," he agreed. "Someone dragged me up to the top of Tokyo Tower once, and the city lights went on as far as the eye could see."

"Someone got _you_ to the top of Tokyo Tower?" On Jack's left, the recently graduated agent leaned up to look over at his roommate. "Let me guess. Terrorist."

Mac smirked and tapped his bottle of beer against the deck. "She really kinda was."

Jack shook his head. "Nah, man. Sydney's got Tokyo topped. And both of 'em beat London hands down."

His partner glanced over at him. "Did you even see the London skyline? You were only there for about six hours."

"And didn't you take the Chunnel in?"

Jack nodded, trying to pick out Santa Monica Pier without actually standing up and going over to the railing. "Yeah, I did. But you could see part of the city proper from that fancy conference room. London ain't that pretty. I'll admit though, I _am_ a little disappointed we didn't go up in the Eye."

Mac snorted. "Were we supposed to do that before or after you got throat punched?"

Jack gave him a half-hearted dirty look, and turned back to the very distant ferris wheel doing its light show for the tourists. Hell, he had about zero chance of getting Mac up in that little ol' wheel, let alone one as big as the Eye in London. Even if the physics of that behemoth were fascinating, Mac would be happy to be fascinated by it on terra firma.

"That's why I keep tellin' you both to pick up a little krav maga. The Israelis got it right, man. Simple but effective moves anybody can do."

Even out of shape corporate thirty-somethings. He wondered idly which black site she'd been taken to, and whether they'd even had to touch her to secure her cooperation.

"Your voice is getting better."

"Yeah," he agreed, and took another lubricating swallow of beer.

Bozer could only stand the silence so long. "So you were kinda a big deal at the CIA, huh."

The Santa Monica Pier ferris wheel turned round and round, and Jack just watched it. "Nah. Big pain in the ass, more like."

Mac apparently decided he'd roasted his right foot long enough, and swapped it for his left. "Actually, he kinda was. It was a big coup for DXS when he came on board."

"How come you never talk about it? And don't give me the line about havin' to kill me, 'cause Matty's said some stuff that I'm sure I didn't have clearance to hear."

Jack grunted. "Well, Boze, she's the boss. And to be perfectly honest, that is a part of my life that I am happy to have put in the rear view mirror." He shook himself and sat up, plopping his beer bottle by Mac's foot and grabbing the branch he was using to stoke the fire in the pit. "Now, I don't wanna jinx it, but boys, I think we might be on our own tonight."

A few embers floated up from the pit, and Jack kept an eye on them as he reclaimed his beer and settled back. Beside him, Mac glanced at his father's watch and frowned.

"I think you might be right." He tapped his beer against the deck thoughtfully, frown still in place. "Guess it was asking a little much. Hey, just kidding, I'm not really dead, come on over and hang."

Bozer blew out his cheeks. "Come on, dude, it wasn't like it was your idea-"

"No, but it is my team, and it was my call."

Jack glanced at his partner. Mac very rarely pulled the rank card. He typically let Matty take that role, he almost never issued instructions or functioned as anything other than an equal member. An equal partner. He was right, though; it _was_ his team, and when Matty and her counterpart at the Company had pitched the idea, they'd phrased it as though Mac had the option to turn it down.

But Jack was pretty sure if Mac had balked, Matty would have made it an order. "I don't see any other way this coulda gone, dude. Yeah, Cage is a pro and could have faked it, but Ri doesn't have the chops yet. There was no reason to bring 'em in, and they were a lot safer out."

And not that he'd say it in front of Bozer, but there had been a more compelling reason not to read Cage in.

"I know." Mac sounded frustrated. "But you've been that guy. It feels like . . ." He broke off and shook his head. "I work hard to make sure we all trust each other. I don't like these kinds of ops making room for doubt."

"Amen, brother." Jack raised his bottle.

"Maybe we're lookin' at this all wrong." Bozer leaned forward, studying the fire. "Trust me, I know exactly what it feels like when someone lies to you about somethin' super important." He flashed his roommate a look. "It stings, but it makes sense. I don't think Riley'd hold that against you."

"Maybe not forever, but right now she's pissed. I didn't even get a 'glad you're not dead' hug." He shook his head. "As for Cage, I'm afraid I've left her wondering if I have concerns about her capabilities."

"Yeah, she also has the multiple spook agency resume that Jack does," Bozer admitted. "I kinda thought they went with Jack because you're way older."

Jack graced the younger man with a glare. "Thanks, Boze."

"Just sayin,' you're closer to retirement, and I mean, I think Cage has the hots for you, Mac, but even when she thought you were dead she wasn't all _that_ torn up. Meanwhile, the whole planet knows how Jack gets when you've got a papercut. Way easier to sell it with Jack."

Mac opened his mouth, but then he just shook his head and drank his beer instead. Bozer shot them both a quick grin.

"Maybe you're readin' too much into it, and it's not that deep. I mean, when did Matty let 'em know? When we were flying back from London?"

Jack had a couple gaps after getting tagged in the throat. It took an hour for the swelling to go down enough to ditch the O2, and the pain meds and anti-inflammatories kept him from really caring that he couldn't say a damn thing, so he was pretty sure there were some calls they hadn't bothered him with.

He did recall their copilot's surprise when Mac finally remembered he was still in costume, and pulled his nose off.

"Maybe tonight they just wanted to take it all in. I mean, with us gone, who else did they have to talk to?"

Cage didn't seem like the kind of woman to seek out emotional support in the form of coworkers, and he was pretty sure, after what he'd done, that Riley wouldn't have had any to give.

Jack shoved the thought away before it could show on his face. In truth, he'd been both hoping and dreading Riley would show up. This was not a pizza and arcade kinda conversation, and he had no idea how to start it, but he knew damn well he needed to think up a way pretty fucking fast, or –

"You think Cage and Riley are having a mani pedi party at Cage's place right now." Mac's voice was flat.

"Well, no, more like tacos and tequila, but sure. Why not?"

Jack made a face. "Tacos don't sound so bad right about now, but I think I am about done with hard liquor for a while."

"That's probably a good plan."

All three of them jumped, and Jack was on his feet before he made the decision to stand. Riley was leaning on the doorframe with her phone in her hand and an earbud in her right ear, and she had a satisfied little smirk on her face.

"Manis and pedis, huh?" she added coolly, giving Bozer a look.

His mouth opened and closed a couple times, gasping fish style, and Jack, with no idea what to do with himself now that he was on his feet, awkwardly hopped out of the firepit.

"Hey, Riley, we were afraid you'd-"

"Crapped out on you for girl's night in. Yeah, I got that." She plucked out the earbud, and that was about the time it occurred to him to be suspicious.

Mac had obviously made the same leap. "How long have you been there?"

"About ten minutes," she replied airily, scanning the deck before locating the old orange cooler. She made a show of opening it up and selecting a brew. "You didn't notice? Wow, looks like I do have the chops to sneak up on you superspies."

Mac had also taken his feet, coming up to stand beside him, and Jack didn't miss his partner's crestfallen look. "Listen, Riley-"

"Did," she reminded him, and slipped her phone into her back pocket as she approached. To Jack's and obviously Mac's surprise, she wrapped him up in a hug. "Glad you're not dead."

Mac closed his eyes with a grimace, but returned the hug. "Thanks."

She let him go after a few seconds and took a step back. "And yeah, I'm pissed. I just spent two weeks trying to track down the assholes I thought murdered you. Now I know exactly how to do it and not get caught. Keep that in mind the next time you decide to keep me in the dark."

"Message received, loud and clear." Even though his tone was light, his eyes were searching hers out. "Thanks for coming."

Jack knew there was more being said there than just the words, and he couldn't see Riley's face, but Mac's posture relaxed, just a little.

Riley twisted the cap off her beer, and for lack of any better idea of something to say, Jack glanced back at the house. "Cage skulking back there too?"

"No, and I don't know if she's going to make it tonight." The look she gave him was pointedly neutral, and Jack knew he wasn't going to get off nearly as easily as Mac had.

Then again, he didn't deserve to.

"She's handling that other thing we talked about today."

"The leak?" The lightness had left Mac's tone.

Riley nodded, and took a sip of beer. "Yeah, but no. Just good old fashioned embezzling. Her partner at Doggie Daze has been rounded up and Cage is making sure it was just the money and they weren't selling information on the side."

"Wait . . . isn't Doggie Daze that yuppy pet place just down the street from Ricarnello's?"

The very neutral look transferred to Bozer, and Jack took a second to wonder if something had happened above and beyond being part of the joint op.

"Yeah. While I was tracking down all those bogus clues you left me we noticed she was actually there when Sarah didn't shoot you." Another dark look at Mac, who winced.

But Bozer was nodding thoughtfully. "So, if you hadn't been looking so hard, do you think you would've caught her?"

Now it was Jack's turn to wince. _Not the best play, man._

Riley's eyebrows bunched. "Dude, did you seriously just go there?"

He started backpedaling immediately. "I'm just saying, sometimes these things have a way of working out for the best-"

"And speaking of murdering people," Jack cut in smoothly, "Riles, can I talk to you for a second?"

There was something hard in her eyes, but after a few seconds she rolled them and let him lead the way to the door. He didn't go inside; the house was pretty dark and frankly, it wasn't the best place or time to really get into it. There were just a couple things that needed to be said sooner rather than later.

"Riley-"

"Look, Jack-"

"Please," he insisted, and she reluctantly closed her mouth and gestured with the beer bottle.

"I know you're pissed that we didn't loop you in and we can talk about that later. Riley, you have _got_ to believe me, what I said to you, the way I acted, that'd never happen –"

She gestured as if she was warding off a fly. "Look, I get it, it's fine –"

He caught her hand and sandwiched it between his, bending down a little so they were almost nose to nose. It was hard to keep his rasping voice quiet, but he tried. "No, Riley, it's not fine. Not ever. It wasn't fine when you were a kid, and it sure as hell isn't now. The apartment was being watched, they were gonna show up any second and I needed you safe. I know I scared you, and I'm sorry as hell that's how I did it."

She took a breath, like she was going to speak, but then her eyes dropped to his hands. He held tight and stayed quiet.

"I . . . when I saw you at that mansion in France, Matty said you'd quit, told Jill to keep tabs on you. I knew I could tweak the software, make you disappear, but-"

Jack bit back a curse. "I'm sorry, you weren't supposed to see that-"

"Well, what did you expect?" She yanked her hand away from him. "What did you expect me to do? Just . . . just _leave_ you all alone, in all that pain? Did you really think if you ignored all my calls, I'd just say fuck it and walk away? Did you _think_ about this, about any of it before you – what the hell do you think of me, that you thought I'd just -"

"Oh, Riley, Riley-" He put his empty hands on her shoulders, hating the way she made to pull away from him. "I hoped I'd piss you off. That you'd be so wrapped up in the work that it'd distract you. Matty and Jill were supposed to be running interference. It took 'em way longer to approach me than we thought and . . . and I hoped . . . when you saw the booze you'd think the worst and stay mad."

She certainly looked mad. "Were you even really drunk, when -?"

He tried to swallow his voice into working better. "Not as much as I looked. I would _never_ have touched you, Riley, even if I was-"

"Well, you looked pretty damn convincing." It was almost an accusation.

"I . . ." His mouth was suddenly dry. "I was thinkin' about Elwood. When I set up that part. I was thinkin' about the night he showed up, and the way he acted. I never . . . I didn't want you to see . . ." He trailed off. "But you are your mother's daughter."

Riley narrowed her eyes. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

He smiled, just a little. "That you are just as determined and headstrong as she is, and every single damn part of this op where I had to be an ass is the exact time you checked in."

She huffed out an irritated sigh, and he squeezed her shoulders. "I know you're mad, and I'm not askin' ya not to be. Just . . . just please. Please tell me that you know that I'd never do that to you. Not even if I'm hurtin'. I can't promise that I wouldn't really lose it if somethin' ever happened to you or to Mac, but I will _never_ be so far gone that I would raise a hand to you. Not ever."

Riley looked at him, really looked at him, and she started to nod. "Yeah, I-" She stopped, and then she brought up her free hand and grasped the one on her shoulder, and gave hit a squeeze. "I know that, Jack."

"Good, good." He pulled her in tight, and knots he didn't even know he was carrying loosened a little when she squeezed him back.

Then she pushed him away. "But now I know that you're also a really good liar, when you need to be. This is not over." She gestured between them. "I'm still pretty pissed off. And you're just gonna have to deal with it."

"Yeah, yeah." He nodded vigorously. "Yeah, whatever you need, I'll do it. I'm here."

"Great. Go be over there instead."

She pointed back towards Bozer and Mac, who were gallantly carrying on a spirited conversation with their backs to the house. Jack nodded so much it actually made his throat hurt.

"Yeah. Good idea." He all but scampered back to his seat and his now-warm beer, and she took the seat furthest from him, on the other side of Mac. But some of her frostiness seemed to have thawed, and her attention shifted to punishing Bozer, which Jack found somehow reassuring.

-M-

Mac rinsed out the last bottle, adding it to the growing pile of glass to be taken to the recycling center. Bozer had already finished taking care of the taco remains, and his roomie was shuffling down the hallway to his bedroom.

"You turning in?"

He got a silent wave as a response, and then Boze rounded the corner and was gone.

Mac grabbed a towel and dried off his hands, then looped the counter and intercepted Jack, who had his jacket under his arm and was staring at his phone with a frown.

"What's up?"

It took his partner a few seconds to respond. "Uh, nothin'. Burgess in Accounting was fired, the night shift just sent along their termination checklist." Jack started forward, and Mac stood his ground, directly in his path.

The other man looked at him quizzically. "What?"

Mac gave him a long look.

Jack kept up pretenses for a few more seconds, then he gave up and sighed. "Look, dude, I'm tired, I got a mess to clean up before I turn in-"

"I know. That's why you're staying here tonight, and we'll tackle it in the morning."

Jack hadn't been back to his apartment since before he left for Paris. It was still set for the op, and probably smelled like a dumpster. It was the very last place Jack needed to be.

He looked like he was going to try making another excuse, but then he just sucked a loud breath through his nose and dropped his jacket over the back of one of the kitchen chairs. ". . . thanks."

"Anytime." Reasonably sure it wasn't a trick, Mac went back to the kitchen and grabbed a couple bottles of water. Jack had sunk into one of the couches, fishing in his pocket for the last of the drugs the medic had given him, and he accepted the bottle of water with a nod of thanks. Mac carried his own bottle to the other couch, easing into the worn leather.

They had a perfectly serviceable guest room with a perfectly serviceable bed, where he would eventually chase his partner, but for the moment they just sat in the comfortable warmth of the house, with only the light over the kitchen sink for company.

Mac heard the cap screw off the bottle, and a painful sounding swallow. He could admit to himself that he'd been more than a little scared when he'd dashed into the office and found Jack on the ground. Disarming and subduing Eve hadn't taken him more than ten seconds, he'd kept a running countdown in his head as he'd tried to figure out if it was just laryngeal spasms or she'd actually crushed Jack's larynx.

Thankfully it had been the former, not the latter. He'd had to do a field tracheotomy all of once, and he was pretty sure if he'd tried it on Jack, he'd have gotten decked into next week.

"How are you doing?" he asked softly.

From the other couch, he heard a sigh. "I know what you're up to, Mac, and I'm good. It's not like we're doin' this all the time."

He appreciated that 'we' even if it was incorrect use of English grammar. "Looked like your talk with Riley went okay."

"Yeah," was all Jack said.

Mac resisted the urge to get up and go over there. Jack was being uncharacteristically quiet, and he knew some of that was his throat, but –

"I'm sorry, Jack-"

Jack made a noise that might have been a growl, if it hadn't been so wispy and pathetic. "Knock it off. We talked about this."

"Yeah, well, planning and execution are two very different things." And they had talked about it. At length. Mostly around the all too real possibility that one day one or other of them really was going to be killed, and Mac didn't like the idea that anyone thought Jack falling apart to this degree was not only possible, but plausible, even likely.

His partner huffed. ". . . how much did you two see?"

Mac tried to interpret that question. "At the apartment? We were pretty far out, just enough to see who was coming and going."

"No, I don't mean with Riles." Jack sounded very, very tired. "Don't worry about that, man. That's on me." He shifted, and Mac glanced up, but his partner was just getting more comfortable. He stretched out on the couch, throwing an arm over his head. "I meant Boze. Did he see . . .?"

See that it wasn't like their normal work.

"No," Mac said quietly. "I don't think he did."

He didn't know what to look for. Boze had just gotten out of spy school, he recognized all the pieces and parts, the framework, planning scenarios, building a character. Mac knew his roommate knew it wasn't all fun and games, and that one day, he might be put in a position where he'd have to take a life in order not to lose his own.

But that was because they worked for DXS. Because they worked at the Phoenix.

The CIA was an entirely different animal. Sure, they both strove to make the world a safer place – at least, that was the general idea. They just went about it very, very differently. He'd hoped this one was straightforward enough, much more black and white than most of Jack's previous jobs, but when he saw Sarah – or someone who was close enough in all the ways that hurt, and not nearly close enough in all the ways that were worst –

He was glad they'd had to be so hands off. They'd had no coms, no eyes or ears on Jack save the ones he'd been born with. It was nerve wracking to leave his partner so exposed, but he wasn't sure Jack could put that other guy back on if he'd known they could see.

"Good," Jack grated, then cleared his throat. "That's good."

"Jack . . ." He hesitated. "You're not him. You know that, right?"

There was a long pause. "I coulda been. I woulda been, if you hadn't dragged my ass out when you did."

It was true that he didn't know much about what Jack had done for the CIA. He could make guesses, fairly accurate ones based on the wounds, some physical, others not so much, when he'd see his old Delta overwatch. When they were both stateside, they'd get together for beers, or a morning run, and the guy who had re-upped to keep his ass alive in Afghanistan would have to fight his way past someone colder. Someone crueler.

Mac knew about Sarah, the way Jack lit up when he talked about her. Knew she was doing what she could to keep him grounded. But partners weren't always together, not the way the CIA ran things, and there was too much time Jack was on his own.

When Thornton came knocking with her offer, Mac had leapt, and not just for the potential opportunity to truly save lives, to solve problems on a global scale as he had been unable to do in Afghanistan. It was also a chance to get Jack out. Get him back.

Save him.

"You get my back, I get yours. That's how it works," he reminded the other man.

Jack didn't say anything for a while. "I really hate that guy."

"I know you do." Jack put a lot of effort into being Jack. The goofing off, the constant stream of conversation, the total inability to deal with boredom-

Mac knew why Jack couldn't stand to be bored. Why he was afraid of it.

"I didn't see much of that guy. He'd have done a few things differently than you did. He wouldn't have arrested Eve, for one."

His partner snorted. "This guy didn't either."

Semantics. "Yeah, well this guy shows restraint." Even if the other guy would never have been punched in the throat, because he would have seen no difference between Eve and any other killer in that building. There was a reason that other guy was around, there was a reason Jack needed him.

The best he could do was try not to put Jack in a position where the other guy was required.

"I really hate this job sometimes."

"Yeah." Mac relaxed into the couch. He'd give him another five or so, see if he wanted to talk, but that was probably all he was going to get out of his partner, and for once, Jack's self-assessment seemed reasonably accurate.

So long as they didn't make this kind of op a habit, Jack would be alright.

It seemed like no time has passed at all when a firm hand slipped over his mouth. Mac grabbed it by the wrist before he woke enough to freeze.

The light over the sink was still on, and he could clearly see Jack's face, in profile. His partner had his nine mil in his other hand, and when Mac patted his wrist again, he glanced down, then pulled his hand away with a nod.

Mac got the message, and eased off the couch as soundlessly as he could.

His partner moved silently towards the front hall, having apparently already cleared the living room and kitchen, and Mac saw immediately what had gotten his attention. On the kitchen table, that Mac very clearly remembered cleaning off and wiping down, was a single white candle, lit. It was sitting beside a bottle of wine, and a small piece of paper was propped up against it.

Mac crossed the living room carefully, glancing out at the deck a moment before checking the kitchen – just to be sure. Jack had moved on from the front door, which was closed, and was now working his way swiftly down the hall – undoubtedly to check on Boze. Mac left him to it, examining the candle. It was a standard taper candle, it had probably started as a ten inch and roughly half an inch was gone.

The math was all too easy. The candle, assuming it was brand new, had been burning twenty minutes or less.

He eyed the card, gut clenching, and then steeled himself and picked it up.

 _Dear Angus,_

 _You have no idea how relieved I was to find that the rumors_

 _of your death had been greatly exaggerated. It was a beautiful_

 _performance, one of your best. I had actual shivers running_

 _down my spine. Bravo!_

 _I stopped by earlier but dear Riley was having so much fun_

 _eavesdropping I just couldn't bring myself to interrupt. I'm_

 _sure Jack was simply exhausted from all the killing he's been_

 _doing these last two weeks, but you really do need to address_

 _your physical security gaps._

 _We'll talk soon._

 _Yours Truly,_

 _Murdoc_

Mac heard a muffled noise, and then the hall light flipped on. He waited until Jack and Bozer came back down the hall, and wordlessly handed the note to Jack. It crumpled a little in his hand, but Bozer rescued it in time to read it as well.

Mac looked the candle up and down, even going so far as to press his thumbnail into it, but it was truly just wax, and he blew it out, not missing the symbolism.

Twenty minutes ago Murdoc had been standing in this very room, and they had been fast asleep. He could have killed them both then and there as easily as snuffing out a candle.

"Well, he's not wrong," Bozer finally said, his voice thick. "We're gonna have to do _something_ , dude. Maybe get a dog?"

Mac frowned, glancing at the window over the sink. He watched it several seconds, but there was no movement.

"I'm not giving him something else he can hurt," he finally said. "Jack, as soon as we get your apartment cleaned up –"

"Yeah," Jack agreed.

FIN

-M-

I really had no intention of writing anything else until November. But after two months of spending my evenings writing, once the initial happiness at finding myself with my evenings free had been enjoyed, I found I missed the habit. Since NaNoWriMo is supposed to build a writing habit, that's sort of the point of it . . . I guess this is proof that it works.

A few of you are privy to why I wrote Turkey Day. A similar point of inspiration/irritation prompted this. The New Orleans ep did a decent job of reminding people that Jack is not just a grunt, he's a full-fledged CIA agent, but I wanted to read something that demonstrated he's perfectly capable of doing the same high-level spy work as Mac or Cage.

I also wanted to try my hand at writing something tear-jerking, which has been a spectacular failure, though I'm glad I gave it a shot. By the time I figured out that what I'd plotted just didn't lend itself to super sad scenes, I'd written like twenty pages, and I figured **Kuku25** (and possibly **Gib** ) would murder me if I threw this out, so I finished it.


End file.
